There are many factors, all the ones that you have mentioned can have a potential effect, so it’s more patient-related factors, comorbidities, maybe psychological disorders, more therapy-related factors, particularly the type of endocrine therapy that is being offered, maybe a more general social or I say, healthcare factors in terms of also drug reimbursement. These are all factors that may have an impact on drug adherence...
There are many factors, all the ones that you have mentioned can have a potential effect, so it’s more patient-related factors, comorbidities, maybe psychological disorders, more therapy-related factors, particularly the type of endocrine therapy that is being offered, maybe a more general social or I say, healthcare factors in terms of also drug reimbursement. These are all factors that may have an impact on drug adherence. Like among probably the patient-related factors that we have talked about in the session, one very critical one is young age. Young age has been shown in many different studies to be a significant risk factor for non-adherence. One potential reason is, for example, the toxicity of endocrine therapy in this specific group of patients, particularly the need to give ovarian function suppression and all the side effects related to this treatment. But we do have evidence that there are also other reasons, particularly for young women being non-adherent, for example, a wish to become pregnant before completing the standard duration of endocrine therapy. So we need to more proactively understand what are the drivers for non-adherence to therapy in the specific patient that we have in front of us to help her really go back to endocrine therapy and actually take the treatment. Because again, we have now evidence to prove that if the patient is not taking the treatment, the survival outcomes are worse as compared to those patients that stick to the treatment and really adhere to the therapy.
This transcript is AI-generated. While we strive for accuracy, please verify this copy with the video.
