Maintenance drugs are prescribed to people to help prevent heart attack and cardiovascular diseases. The dilemma revolving around taking in daily medicines is this: are people willing to commit themselves in religiously taking these pills every day just to save themselves from impending heart attacks? Researchers have long been investigating on polypills which will be taken by individuals to promote heart health.
For individuals, taking maintenance medicines daily entails collecting, remembering and consuming them. For some, this can be a daunting task. That is why a group of researchers from University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine sought answers through an online survey from people with an average age of 50 years old. A total of 1,000 sample respondents from 18,780 e-mail invitations were incurred.
All the respondents answered one question, and that is how much they are willing to cut short from the end of their lives by avoiding daily meds for cardiovascular disease prevention? Accordingly, the results and findings were featured in the journal Circulation of the American Heart Association reported Medical News Today.
The researchers discovered that more than two thirds of the respondents said that they are not willing to cut short their lives by any number and would just prefer to drink daily pills to prevent cardiovascular diseases. However, 1 in 3 respondents are willing to cut off weeks from their lives rather than take in daily pills.
According to the lead author and resident physician in the department of medicine at UCSF's division of general internal medicine, "The study reinforces the idea that many people do not like taking pills, for whatever reason."
He added in an email sent to Reuters, "Most physicians I know are very well aware of that, however, so it reiterates that we should be having discussions with patients about what their priorities are, and if they value the extended life they might get from taking a pill more than the effect on their quality of life for having to take that pill every day for the rest of their life."
The respondents were also asked how much money they are willing to pay out to avoid taking in pills. Also, they were asked how much risk of death they would accept just to be opted out of taking daily pills. The pills would be given for free.
In conclusion, 4 out of 5 individuals were taking daily medicines with 54% of them having at last three pills to take a day. In the study, 70% said that they do not want to cut any time from their lives to avoid taking daily pills. However, 8% are willing to cut short their lives rather than take daily medicines.
For the risk of death, 13% would accept a small risk while 9% are willing to risk a 10% chance. An average amount of $1,445 will be given just to avoid daily pills for the rest of their lives. Yet, 41% said they wouldn't pay any amount.
"On a population level, even for the small reductions in quality of life like those found in this study, that effect multiplied across millions of people can have very large effects on the cost-effectiveness of that drug for a population," Dr. Hutchins explains.