Physician Effectiveness in Interventions to Improve Cardiovascular Medication Adherence: A Systematic Review

BACKGROUND: Medications for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease save lives but adherence is often inadequate. The optimal role for physicians in improving adherence remains unclear. OBJECTIVE: Using existing evidence, we set the goal of evaluating the physician\u27s role in improving medication adherence. DESIGN: We conducted systematic searches of English-language peer-reviewed publications in MEDLINE and EMBASE from 1966 through 12/31/2008. SUBJECTS AND INTERVENTIONS: We selected randomized controlled trials of interventions to improve adherence to medications used for preventing or treating cardiovascular disease or diabetes. MAIN MEASURES: Articles were classified as either (1) physician active -a physician participated in designing or implementing the intervention; (2) physician passive -physicians treating intervention group patients received patient adherence information while physicians treating controls did not; or (3) physicians noninvolved. We also identified studies in which healthcare professionals helped deliver the intervention. We did a meta-analysis of the studies involving healthcare professionals to determine aggregate Cohen\u27s D effect sizes (ES). KEY RESULTS: We identified 6,550 articles; 168 were reviewed in full, 82 met inclusion criteria. The majority of all studies (88.9%) showed improved adherence. Physician noninvolved studies were more likely (35.0% of studies) to show a medium or large effect on adherence compared to physician-involved studies (31.3%). Among interventions requiring a healthcare professional, physician-noninvolved interventions were more effective (ES 0.47; 95% CI 0.38-0.56) than physician-involved interventions (ES 0.25; 95% CI 0.21-0.29; p \u3c 0.001). Among physician-involved interventions, physician-passive interventions were marginally more effective (ES 0.29; 95% CI 0.22-0.36) than physician-active interventions (ES 0.23; 95% CI 0.17-0.28; p = 0.2). CONCLUSIONS: Adherence interventions utilizing non-physician healthcare professionals are effective in improving cardiovascular medication adherence, but further study is needed to identify the optimal role for physicians

The epigenetic role of vitamin C in health and disease

Recent advances have uncovered a previously unknown function of vitamin C in epigenetic regulation. Vitamin C exists predominantly as an ascorbate anion under physiological pH conditions. Ascorbate was discovered as a cofactor for methylcytosine dioxygenases that are responsible for DNA demethylation, and also as a likely cofactor for some JmjC domain-containing histone demethylases that catalyze histone demethylation. Variation in ascorbate bioavailability thus can influence the demethylation of both DNA and histone, further leading to different phenotypic presentations. Ascorbate deficiency can be presented systematically, spatially and temporally in different tissues at the different stages of development and aging. Here, we review how ascorbate deficiency could potentially be involved in embryonic and postnatal development, and plays a role in various diseases such as neurodegeneration and cancer through epigenetic dysregulation