{"id":45243,"date":"2014-09-15T17:22:12","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T21:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=news&#038;p=45243"},"modified":"2014-09-15T17:22:12","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T21:22:12","slug":"cheaper-generic-statins-beat-brand-name-statins-in-adherence-and-outcomes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2014\/09\/15\/cheaper-generic-statins-beat-brand-name-statins-in-adherence-and-outcomes\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheaper Generic Statins Beat Brand-Name Statins in Adherence and Outcomes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A large observational study finds that people who received a prescription for a generic statin were more likely to take their pills than people who received a prescription for a brand-name statin. This increased adherence appeared to lead to a small but significant improvement in outcomes.<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"http:\/\/annals.org\/article.aspx?articleid=1905128\">paper published in\u00a0<em>Annals of Internal Medicine<\/em><\/a>, Joshua Gagne and colleagues at the Brigham and Women&#8217;s Hospital and CVS Caremark (the study was funded by generic manufacturer Teva Pharmaceuticals) compared data from 83,731 people who started a prescription for a generic statin with 6,380 people who started a prescription for a brand-name drug. They found that adherence, \u00a0as measured by the proportion of days covered (PDC) up to one year, was significantly higher in the generic group than in the brand-name group (average PDC: 77% versus 71%, p&lt;0.001). The patients in the generic statin group also had a corresponding 8% reduction in the incidence of death and hospitalization for an acute coronary syndrome, which the authors calculated led to a reduction of 1.53 events per 100 person-years.<\/p>\n<p>The mean copayment for the prescriptions was $10 in the generic group and $48 in the brand-name group. &#8220;Our finding that adherence is greater with generic statins than with brand-name statins is therefore not surprising and is consistent with other studies that have shown a direct relation between higher copayments and lower adherence.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/annals.org\/article.aspx?articleid=1905135\">an accompanying editorial<\/a>,\u00a0Walter Cullen and\u00a0Patrick Murray write that the authors &#8220;make the distinction between generic and brand-name drugs, but the operating factor for patients is affordability.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A large observational study finds that people who received a prescription for a generic statin were more likely to take their pills than people who received a prescription for a brand-name statin. This increased adherence appeared to lead to a small but significant improvement in outcomes. In a paper published in\u00a0Annals of Internal Medicine, Joshua [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,7],"tags":[1039,2370,830,223,584],"class_list":["post-45243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-prevention","tag-adherence","tag-brand-names","tag-costs","tag-generics","tag-statins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}