Understanding of antidiabetic medication is associated with blood glucose in patients with type 2 diabetes: At baseline date of the KAMOGAWA‐DM cohort study

AIMS/INTRODUCTION: Medication adherence, which is decreased by a poor understanding of medications, has a close association with blood glucose level in patients with type 2 diabetes. However, a relationship between the understanding of antidiabetic medication and blood glucose level in patients with type 2 diabetes is unclear. Here, we aimed to investigate the relationship between the understanding of antidiabetic medication and blood glucose level in patients with type 2 diabetes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Lifestyle factors were evaluated by a questionnaire method, in the present cross‐sectional study. Poor understanding of antidiabetic medication (PUAD) was defined as a discrepancy between the answer and the actual use of oral antidiabetic medication on the questionnaire. Poor blood glucose level was defined as hemoglobin A1c ≥8%. To investigate the impact of PUAD on poor blood glucose level, propensity‐score matching analysis was used to remove the bias of confounding variables, including sex, age, log (duration of diabetes +1), body mass index, number of oral antidiabetic medications, smoking status, alcohol drinking, exercise, nephropathy, neuropathy, oral antidiabetic medications and insulin. RESULTS: Among 479 patients, 40 patients (8.4%) were categorized into the PUAD group. The hemoglobin A1c of patients with PUAD was higher than that of patients without (7.5 [1.3] vs 7.2 [0.9]%, P = 0.041). In the propensity‐matched 74 patients, PUAD was associated with poor blood glucose level (odds ratio 5.45, 95% confidence interval 1.54–25.8, P = 0.007) by logistic regression analysis. CONCLUSION: A poor understanding of antidiabetic medication is associated with poor blood glucose level in patients with type 2 diabetes.