• Veronika Rauscher, Matthias Englbrecht, Désirée van der Heijde, Georg Schett, and Axel J Hueber.
• From the Department of Internal Medicine 3 and the Institute for Clinical Immunology, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany; and the Department of Rheumatology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, the Netherlands.V. Rauscher, Medical Student; M. Englbrecht, Dipl.-Psych. Univ.; G. Schett, MD, Professor; A.J. Hueber, MD, PhD, Department of Internal Medicine 3 and Institute for Clinical Immunology, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg; D. van der Heijde, MD, Professor, Department of Rheumatology, Leiden University Medical Center.
• J Rheumatol. 2015 Mar 1; 42 (3): 386-90.

ObjectiveTo test medication adherence using the Compliance-Questionnaire-Rheumatology (CQR).MethodsInvitation letter and CQR were sent to 240 patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Followup CQR was sent 3 months later. Adherence was evaluated using CQR 80% cutoff scores.ResultsSeventy-eight patients who were being treated with disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs provided full information on the CQR at both points in time. Eleven patients (14.1%) were classified as adherent based on taking compliance (TC), with only 3 patients (3.8%) adherent in regard to correct dosing (CD) [followup: 13 (16.7%) and 3 (3.8%) for TC and CD, respectively]. Nonadherence was not related to disease activity or side effects.ConclusionWe demonstrated low adherence, suggesting differences between doctors' records and patients' practice of antirheumatic drug therapy.

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