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

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. 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. 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. 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.