PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jeffrey R. Curtis
AU  - Aseem Bharat
AU  - Lang Chen
AU  - Jeffrey D. Greenberg
AU  - Leslie Harrold
AU  - Joel M. Kremer
AU  - Tanya Sommers
AU  - Dimitrios Pappas
TI  - Agreement between Rheumatologist and Patient-reported Adherence to Methotrexate in a US Rheumatoid Arthritis Registry
AID  - 10.3899/jrheum.151136
DP  - 2016 Jun 01
TA  - The Journal of Rheumatology
PG  - 1027--1029
VI  - 43
IP  - 6
4099  - http://www.jrheum.org/content/43/6/1027.short
4100  - http://www.jrheum.org/content/43/6/1027.full
SO  - J Rheumatol2016 Jun 01; 43
AB  - Objective. Rheumatologists have limited tools to assess medication adherence. The extent to which methotrexate (MTX) adherence is overestimated by rheumatologists is unknown.Methods. We deployed an Internet survey to patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) participating in a US registry. Patient self-report was the gold standard compared to MTX recorded in the registry.Results. Response rate to the survey was 44%. Of 228 patients whose rheumatologist reported current MTX at the time of the most recent registry visit, 45 (19.7%) had discontinued (n = 19, 8.3%) or missed ≥ 1 dose in the last month (n = 26, 11.4%). For the subgroup whose rheumatologist also confirmed at the next visit that they were still taking MTX (n = 149), only 2.6% reported not taking it, and 10.7% had missed at least 1 dose.Conclusion. MTX use was misclassified for 13%–20% of patients, mainly because of 1 or more missed doses rather than overt discontinuation. Clinicians should be aware of suboptimal adherence when assessing MTX response.