How Often People Stop Their Medications: Lessons from IMPROVE-IT

Often, in clinical practice, we may not even be aware of whether people are continuing to take their medications. Trials, with intensive evaluations of motivated participants, likely have the highest levels of medication adherence and provide helpful data from the placebo arms. These researchers analyzed results from IMPROVE-IT, which routinely evaluated discontinuation of medications over 7 years in the study's comparison of ezetimibe + simvastatin with placebo + simvastatin among patients with recent acute coronary syndrome.

Over the course of the trial, 47% of the participants discontinued the study medication. Even by 30 days, 6% had discontinued the study medication; another 14% had discontinued by 1 year. Discontinuation in the placebo…