Adherence and Persistence Among Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Patients During Second-Line Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor Treatment.

In a study published last year in the October 2014 issue of the Journal of Managed Care Specialty Pharmacy, Trivedi et al. compared treatment patterns of dasatinib and nilotinib as second-line tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) therapy in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients during the first year of treatment.1 Trivedi et al. concluded that among second-line TKI-treated patients, dasatinib patients had significantly higher adherence and lower discontinuation rates compared with those receiving nilotinib. We feel that although the study presents results that are of particular interest to the CML community, certain aspects of the study design raise questions, and the conclusions need to be cautiously considered, since they appear not to be fully substantiated by some of the presented results.