• Am J Prev Med · Apr 2024

    Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on dispensing of cardiovascular drugs in Norway: An interrupted time series study.

    • Ugochinyere Vivian Ukah, Robert William Platt, and Hedvig Marie Egeland Nordeng.
    • Pregnancy and Child Health Research Center, HealthPartners Institute, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, School of Population and Global Health, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Electronic address: Vivian.Ukah@mail.mcgill.ca.
    • Am J Prev Med. 2024 Apr 1; 66 (4): 672680672-680.

    IntroductionThe COVID-19 pandemic resulted in changes in prescription patterns and fillings for certain medications, but little is known about its impact on the dispensing of cardiovascular drugs.MethodsTrends in dispensing of cardiovascular drugs before and during the pandemic were examined using a population-based cohort in Norway. Using interrupted time series analyses and considering March 1, 2020 as the interruption point, the impact of the pandemic on defined daily dose dispensing of prescribed cardiovascular drugs was estimated in a population of adults with and without pre-existing cardiovascular disease from January 2018 to December 2021. All data were analyzed in 2023.ResultsIn a total of 4,053,957 adults, 690,910 (17.0%) had pre-existing cardiovascular disease. Prior to the pandemic, there was a significant monthly increase in any cardiovascular drug dispensing among those with pre-existing cardiovascular disease (0.30 defined daily dose per month per adult), including prescription of diuretics, calcium channel blockers, and lipid-modifying agents. After controlling for preinterruption trends, there was a slight decrease in level change immediately after the start of the pandemic (2.5 defined daily dose per month per adult) but an increase in the postinterruption trend (0.06 defined daily dose per month per adult) for dispensing of cardiovascular prescriptions, although these changes were not significant.ConclusionsAlthough the COVID-19 pandemic did not appear to result in significant changes in patterns of cardiovascular drug dispensing in Norway, continued access to cardiovascular drugs remains important to prevent further related morbidity.Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…