Medication adherence reporting in pivotal clinical trials: overview of oral oncological drugs

The Importance of Assessing Drug Exposure and Medication Adherence in Evaluating Investigational Medications: Ensuring Validity and Reliability of Clinical Trial Results

The objective of this current opinion paper is to draw global attention to medication adherence, emphasizing its crucial role in drug trials. Frequently, trialists lean on traditional approaches to assess medication adherence, which, while comfortable, may only reveal what trialists desire rather than offering the essential insights needed for informed decision making in drug development. Understanding drug exposure and medication adherence is paramount when evaluating the effectiveness and safety of investigational medications. Without a comprehensive understanding of how patients adhere to their prescribed treatment regimens, the integrity and dependability of clinical trial results can be compromised. This paper emphasizes the need for measures that accurately and reliably assess medication intake behaviors, enabling the differentiation between minor dosing errors and significant deviations that may impact the drug's efficacy and safety. Accurate knowledge of drug exposure empowers researchers to make informed decisions, identify potential confounding factors, and appropriately interpret study outcomes, ultimately ensuring the validity and reliability of the research findings. By prioritizing drug exposure assessment and medication adherence measurement, clinical trials can enhance their scientific rigor, contribute to more accurate evaluations of investigational medications, and ultimately speed up the development process.

Drug Selection and Posology, Optimal Therapies and Risk/Benefit Assessment in Medicine: The Paradigm of Iron-Chelating Drugs

The design of clinical protocols and the selection of drugs with appropriate posology are critical parameters for therapeutic outcomes. Optimal therapeutic protocols could ideally be designed in all diseases including for millions of patients affected by excess iron deposition (EID) toxicity based on personalised medicine parameters, as well as many variations and limitations. EID is an adverse prognostic factor for all diseases and especially for millions of chronically red-blood-cell-transfused patients. Differences in iron chelation therapy posology cause disappointing results in neurodegenerative diseases at low doses, but lifesaving outcomes in thalassemia major (TM) when using higher doses. In particular, the transformation of TM from a fatal to a chronic disease has been achieved using effective doses of oral deferiprone (L1), which improved compliance and cleared excess toxic iron from the heart associated with increased mortality in TM. Furthermore, effective L1 and L1/deferoxamine combination posology resulted in the complete elimination of EID and the maintenance of normal iron store levels in TM. The selection of effective chelation protocols has been monitored by MRI T2* diagnosis for EID levels in different organs. Millions of other iron-loaded patients with sickle cell anemia, myelodysplasia and haemopoietic stem cell transplantation, or non-iron-loaded categories with EID in different organs could also benefit from such chelation therapy advances. Drawbacks of chelation therapy include drug toxicity in some patients and also the wide use of suboptimal chelation protocols, resulting in ineffective therapies. Drug metabolic effects, and interactions with other metals, drugs and dietary molecules also affected iron chelation therapy. Drug selection and the identification of effective or optimal dose protocols are essential for positive therapeutic outcomes in the use of chelating drugs in TM and other iron-loaded and non-iron-loaded conditions, as well as general iron toxicity.