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 May 01 TA - The Journal of Rheumatology PG - jrheum.151136 4099 - http://www.jrheum.org/content/early/2016/04/22/jrheum.151136.short 4100 - http://www.jrheum.org/content/early/2016/04/22/jrheum.151136.full 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.