Clinical compliance of donepezil in treating Alzheimer's disease in taiwan.

BACKGROUND/RATIONALE: Adherence to cholinesterase inhibitor (ChEI) is associated with treatment effectiveness in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD). We investigated the clinical adherence to donepezil in Taiwan.

METHODS

This was a retrospective study. Patients treated with donepezil were recruited from Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital and Kaohsiung Municipal Ta-Tung Hospital from February 2004 to April 2013. We analyzed their treatment duration in months.

RESULTS

A total of 273 patients were included in our analysis. Sixty-seven patients withdrew from donepezil treatment with mean treatment duration of 28.0 ± 25.9 months. Better initial scores on the Mini-Mental Status Examination (P = .007), Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument (P = .003), and the Clinical Dementia Rating Scale (CDR) Sum of Boxes (P = .011) were positively associated with clinical adherence. The clinical adherent rate was higher in the CDR-0.5 group than in the CDR-2.0 group with significant difference.

CONCLUSION

Although there are some limitations in our study, these findings indicate that early intervention with ChEI in patients with AD should be emphasized and may lead to a better clinical adherence.