Assessment of adherence to antituberculosis drug regimen among patients receiving isoniazid, rifampin and pyrazinamide: Kerman, Iran

Introdution: Among infectious diseases, tuberculosis is one of the leading causes of death killing in nearly 1.5 million people yearly. Considering the importance of patient co-operation in drug therapy and resistance we decided to evaluate the rate of co-operation of tuberculosis infected patients in regard to their use of anti-tuberculosis drugs in Kerman. Methods: This descriptive study was conducted as a sectional and census study and 80 patients succeeded to finalize it. Demographic information was collected through a questionnaire by patients. To carry out the designed test, a urinary sample was taken from each patient and a few drops of each were added to the drug-specific reagents. On the basis of color variation which is special for rifampin, isoniazid and pyrazinamide, we made a decision on the co-operation of the patients. The collected data were analyzed by the the use of SPSS software version 18 and p-value<0.05 was acceptable. To find out the relation between variables, the Chi-square test was applied. Results: The results of this study showed that the total co-operation rate for patients administered with isoniazid was 70%, rifampin 70%, and pirazinamide 68.1%. The quality of adherence to drug orders with age, knowledge of unwanted adverse effects, opium addiction and duration of drug use had a significant relationship (P <0.05); but  with gender, duration of illness, use of another drug, and the presence of another TB infected in the family, no significant difference was observed. Conclusion: We resulted that factors such as age, addiction and lifestyle, duration of treatment and awareness of side effects influence on the co-operation of the patients on drug usage. So that people over 35 years, addict ones, treated for a long time and in the patients with lack of awareness of drug side effects, their adherence to the treatment regimen was lower.