Preventive Medicine & Public Health

Biography

Zhiheng Zhou received his Bachelor’s degree in Clinic Medicine in 2002, and PhD degree in General Practice from Capital Medical University of China in 2012. He worked as Associate Professor at Guangzhou Medical University till 2015. He joined Dr.Sareh Parangi’s lab and served as Postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, USA from 2015 to 2017. He is currently working as Doctor and Associate Professor at Futian Hospital for prevention and treatment of chronic disease, China. He engaged in 18 research projects included community chronic diseases, chemical carcinogenesis mechanism and molecular epidemiology of chronic diseases. He is a highly productive scholar, he has authored or co-authored 160 papers were published in national and Chinese journals.

Abstract

Objective: To explore the medication adherence and treatment satisfaction and to identify its’ factors associated among patients with type 2 diabetes treated at community health service center of Guangdong province, China.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out among T2DM patients form 22 community health service centers of Guangdong province, China. Data on patient socio-demographic, diabetic complications, medication adherence and treatment satisfaction were also collected.

Results: 4,560 T2DM patients were enrolled in the study. 43.1% of patients reported good medication adherence and 56.9% nonadherent. The average satisfaction scores in the effectiveness, side effects, convenience, and global satisfaction domains were 62.3±7.1, 81.1±10.5, 63.7±10.7, and 70.3±6.7 respectively. There was a significant difference in the mean score of the four domains (p<0.001) among patients with different levels of adherence. The Pearson correlation coefficient between total adherence and overall treatment satisfaction score indicated a significant positive correlation (r=0.413; p<0.001). Logistic regression analysis showed that educational level (OR=1.489), duration of DM (OR=0.473), presence of complication (OR=0.812), income (OR=1.989), pattern of antidiabetic treatment (OR=0.697), number of medications (OR=0.628), treatment satisfaction (OR=2.173) were the main impact factors associated with adherence to antidiabetic therapy.

Conclusions: The medication adherence and treatment satisfaction among patients with type 2 diabetes treated at community health service center of Guangdong, China remains unsatisfactory. Low treatment satisfaction may be an important barrier for achieving high rates of adherence to treatment among patients with type 2 diabetes.