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Medicine use and disease control among adolescents with asthma

  • Pharmacoepidemiology and Prescription
  • Published:
European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

Pharmacological treatment is a cornerstone in asthma management, but there is limited evidence on how adolescents use their medication and to what extent their asthma is under control. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare self-reported and register-based medicine use in asthmatic adolescents. Furthermore, we investigated the association between medicine use, patient characteristics, and degree of asthma control.

Methods

Cross-sectional analyses of 331 adolescents with asthma from a population-based birth cohort linked to data from the Swedish Prescribed Drug Register. Adolescents’ asthma medicine use was assessed with three approaches: self-reported medicine use, self-reported use of someone else’s medicines, and dispensed medicines from pharmacies during an 18-month period. Medicine use in adolescents with and without asthma control were compared.

Results

In total, 82 % reported use of asthma medicines, 10 % reported use of someone else’s medicines, and 62 % were dispensed asthma medicines from pharmacies. Among adolescents with self-reported medicine use, 22 % (n = 60) were neither dispensed medicines nor using someone else’s medicines. The majority of those using someone else’s medicines had also been dispensed asthma medicine (22 out of 33). Among adolescents with asthma, 176 were fully controlled and 155 were uncontrolled. Also, boys had higher odds of having asthma control than girls.

Conclusion

Most adolescents with asthma reported use of asthma medicines, but a considerable proportion were neither dispensed any medicines nor using someone else’s medicines. Girls were less likely to achieve asthma control. It is important to combine data sources to understand medicine use among adolescents with asthma.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all participants and staff in the BAMSE study. We acknowledge financial support from the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Asthma and Allergy Foundation, the European Commission’s Seventh Framework 29 Program MeDALL (grant agreement 261357), Foundation Masonic Home for Children in Stockholm, Stockholm County Council, the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, and a Swedish Initiative for Research on Microdata in the Social And Medical Science (SIMSAM) framework (grant no. 340-2013-5867).

Author’s contributions

All authors jointly designed the current study. I.K. supervised the data collection. E.D. and I.K. analyzed the data. All authors participated in the interpretation of the findings. E.D. wrote the initial draft. All authors participated in the critical revision of the manuscript, provided important intellectual input, and approved the final version.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine Solna, Clinical Epidemiology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

    Elin Dahlén, Björn Wettermark & Eva Wikström Jonsson

  2. Department of Healthcare Development, Stockholm County Council, Public Healthcare Services Committee, Stockholm, Sweden

    Elin Dahlén & Björn Wettermark

  3. Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

    Anna Bergström

  4. Clinical Pharmacology, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden

    Eva Wikström Jonsson

  5. Centre for Allergy Research, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

    Eva Wikström Jonsson

  6. Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

    Catarina Almqvist

  7. Lung and Allergy Unit, Astrid Lindgren Children’s Hospital, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden

    Catarina Almqvist

  8. Department of Clinical Science and Education, Södersjukhuset, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

    Inger Kull

  9. Sachs’ Children and Youth Hospital, Södersjukhuset, Stockholm, Sweden

    Inger Kull

Authors
  1. Elin Dahlén
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  2. Björn Wettermark
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  3. Anna Bergström
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  4. Eva Wikström Jonsson
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  5. Catarina Almqvist
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  6. Inger Kull
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elin Dahlén.

Ethics declarations

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Dahlén, E., Wettermark, B., Bergström, A. et al. Medicine use and disease control among adolescents with asthma. Eur J Clin Pharmacol 72, 339–347 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00228-015-1993-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00228-015-1993-x

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