Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Anti-diabetic drug utilization patterns in a government hospital in Saudi Arabia

M R Misbahuddin¹ , A M Hussam^1,2, J G Zohair³, M S Ziaullah⁴

¹Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Rabigh, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; ²Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt; ³Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, King Abdulaziz University; ⁴Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Rabigh, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, 21589, Saudi Arabia.

For correspondence:- M Misbahuddin Email: marafeeq@kau.edu.sa Tel:+966550309636

Accepted: 21 May 2018 Published: 30 June 2018

Citation: Misbahuddin MR, Hussam AM, Zohair JG, Ziaullah MS. Anti-diabetic drug utilization patterns in a government hospital in Saudi Arabia. Trop J Pharm Res 2018; 17(6):1193-1200 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v17i6.28

© 2018 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the prescription patterns of anti-diabetic drugs in a government hospital in Saudi Arabia.

Methods: Retrospective prescription information and medical records of patients who visited outpatient clinics during the last one year were used. The prescriptions were grouped into three: appropriate, partially appropriate and inappropriate. A total of 504 prescriptions were evaluated, while the male to female ratio was 3:1.

Results: The mean anti-diabetic drug per prescription was 2.08 ± 0.85. The most common prescriptions were metformin, sulfonylurea and insulin. More than two-thirds of the patients were on combination therapy. No prescriptions were found for thiazolidinediones, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analogues and α-glucosidase inhibitors. Metformin/sulfonylurea was the most common combination. The patients that received insulin with an oral agent accounted for 8 % of the total prescriptions. While 62 % of the patients reached fasting blood glucose goal of ≤ 126 mg/dl, there was no correlation between normoglycemia and total number of drugs, gender or age group. Moreover, age, sex, initial glucose concentration, and total drugs had no effect on final glucose levels.

Conclusion: Prescription patterns of anti-diabetic drugs are in accordance with international guidelines but some shortcomings were observed probably due to poor prescription writing.

Keywords: Diabetes mellitus, Pharmacoepidemiology, Metformin, Interventions, Prescription