Study: Women Less Likely To Take Post-Heart Attack Medicine

Young women are less likely to be prescribed or fill prescriptions for their medication after having a heart attack than older women or men, according to a recent study.

While it has been shown that the use of secondary prevention medications is lower among women than men post-heart attack, little data is available on whether this is the result of low treatment initiation or low treatment adherence.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

RELATED CONTENT
Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease: Aspirin or Statin
Polypill May Reduce Odds of Future Heart Attacks
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

To further examine this issue, researchers conducted a retrospective population-based cohort study of more than 12,000 heart attack patients who survived the event for at least 1 year.

Overall, the researchers found that after leaving the hospital, only 1/3 of heart attack survivors filled all of their prescriptions for at least 80% of the year, only 65% of women under 55 years old initiated treatment on all appropriate drugs (compared to 75% of men), and there was no difference between men and women in treatment adherence.

“The majority of acute myocardial infarction survivors either discontinue treatment or do not refill their prescriptions consistently,” they concluded.

“Women <55 years are significantly less likely to be on optimal therapy by the end of 1 year after discharge, which is driven by a sex disparity in treatment initiation and not treatment adherence.”

—Michael Potts

Reference:

Smolina K, Ball L, Humphries KH, et al. Sex disparities in post-acute myocardial infarction pharmacologic treatment initiation and adherence. Circulation Outcomes. October 13, 2015. [epub ahead of print]. doi: 10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.115.001987.