Adherence to Drug Therapies in TB/HIV Patients: A Systematic Review of Fixed Dosed Combination Drug Therapy vs. Directly Observed Therapy

Abstract

The objective of this paper was to discern if there was a difference in adherence between fixed dose combination drug therapy (FDCT) and directly observed therapy (DOT) when treating patients with both tuberculosis (TB) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Various search terms were used resulting in 1,646 related articles. 1,637 articles were eliminated using further screening and elimination criteria. A total of 8 peer-reviewed publications and reports classified either as primary or secondary were used for data extraction. These articles studied HIV/TB patients receiving either FDCT or DOT and included extractable data on the number of non-adherent patients versus total number of patients for their respective therapy. Information obtained during data extraction included: article definition of adherence, reasons for non-adherence, number of patients in the trial, and number of patients adherent to therapy. The results showed 70.2% of patients were adherent to directly observed therapy, and 92.5% of patients were adherent to fixed dosed combination drug therapy. This paper concluded that patients are more adherent to FDCT than DOT.