Background Literature states the importance of medication adherence in the effectiveness of deferasirox for the treatment of transfusional iron overload in some hematologic pathologies such as β thalassemia or sickle-cell disease. However, there is no data about patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS).

Purpose Our objective is to evaluate the impact of medication adherence in the effectiveness of deferasirox for the treatment of transfusional iron overload in patients with MDS.

Material and methods A longitudinal, retrospective, observational study was performed in a tertiary hospital. The inclusion criteria were age over 18 years, MDS diagnosis and treatment with deferasirox for transfusion-dependent iron overload from January 2011 to April 2015.

Treatment effectiveness was estimated by serum ferritin (SF) and adherence was measured by medication possession ratio (MPR). Patients were deemed adherent when MPR was ≥ 90%. The correlation between deferasirox dosage, SF and adherence over time was also assessed.

Results 35 patients were included. Median (p25, p75) SF at baseline was 1636 µg/L (1100, 1634), which fell to 1399 µg/L (824, 1772) during follow-up. The median rate of adherence during treatment was 92% (90, 95); although only 54.8% of the patients had a rate of adherence ≥ 90% in every follow-up measurement. A statistically significant correlation between adherence and SF was observed (r= -0.288, p = 0.004). Association between adherence and its potentially predictive variables was described in Table 1.

Conclusion The found association between adherence and treatment effectiveness is especially relevant; according to our results adherent patients have lower values of SF than non-adherent patients.

References and/or Acknowledgements No conflict of interest.