Patients with cardiovascular disease are often prescribed generic medications such as lipid-lowering drugs, anticoagulants and antiarrhythmic agents. Although particular types of medication are therapeutically interchangeable from brand to brand the appearances of individual pills vary in shape and colour. New research carried out by Harvard Medical School suggests that prescribing cardiac drugs that differ in appearance from previously prescribed medication can affect whether patients continue to take them and impact on treatment outcomes.
Researchers studied more than 11,000 patients who had suffered a heart attack and who were placed on generic prescriptions to determine if inconsistent appearance of prescribed generic medication among patients with cardiovascular disease is associated with non-persistent use of these medications. The research team found that for heart patients who had stopped taking their medication there were 30 per cent greater odds that they had a change in pill colour or shape preceding the discontinuation. Cosmetic changes in generic heart medications are common and around a third of patients had a change in pill shape or colour during the study.
In light of these results it is suggested that doctors who prescribe generic cardiovascular drugs proactively warn patients about the potential for appearance changes and explain that even if the pill looks different, the medication is the same.
The study is published in the Annals of Internal Medicine..
