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Electronic reminders can help TB patients stay on medication in China: study

Xinhua, September 16, 2015 Adjust font size:

Giving electronic reminders to tuberculosis (TB) patients in China can reduce the amount of medication doses they miss by half, Chinese and British researchers said Tuesday.

Researchers from China's National Center for Tuberculosis Control and Prevention and Britain's London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine conducted a trial with 4,173 patients from the provinces of Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, Hunan, and Chongqing.

Patients either received text message reminders, an electronic medication monitor, both, or no reminders for their six-month treatment period.

Patients receiving no reminders missed taking 29.9 percent of their medication doses and patients receiving text messages missed 27.3 percent of their doses, according to the results published in the U.S. journal PLOS Medicine.

However, patients with an electronic medication monitor box -- which beeped if not opened at the agreed time -- only missed 17 percent of their medication doses. Patients who received both text messages and an electronic medication monitor missed just 13.9 percent of medication doses.

TB treatment usually lasts for six months and is effective if taken fully, but patients missing drug treatment doses is a major problem, which increases the risk of having a relapse of TB or developing TB drug resistance, the researchers said.

Currently, global plans to reduce TB advise that treatment be taken under the direct observation of a healthcare worker to reduce missed doses, but it has been difficult to carry out in many parts of China, particularly in rural areas, as in other parts of world, they said.

"Directly observed therapy is difficult to implement in China due to limited human resources, poor acceptance and other factors," project investigator Shiwen Jiang of the National Center for Tuberculosis Control and Prevention said in a statement.

"Our study aimed to assess whether the use of the medication monitor and/or text messaging can improve adherence to TB drugs. Our results are encouraging."

Jiang said China plans to scale up the use of medication monitors in some provinces in the next five years.

According to the World Health Organization, China has the world's second largest number of TB cases, accounting for 11 percent of the estimated 9 million global cases.

In an accompanying perspective article, John Metcalfe of the University of California San Francisco and colleagues said: "If replicated, (this study) will have important implications for global TB treatment in moving away from witnessed dosing, which is not universally feasible, towards a more personalized adherence model." Endit