Patients with lupus who take their medications as prescribed have much lower odds of developing type 2 diabetes, a common complication of the disease, finds a new study from the University of British Columbia.

Patients who took at least 90% of their prescribed antimalarial doses were 39% less likely to develop T2DM than patients who discontinued antimalarial therapy. Patients who took less than 90% of their prescribed doses but didn’t discontinue treatment were 22% less likely to develop T2DM.

“Our study provides further support for the importance of adherence to antimalarials in SLE by demonstrating protective impacts on T2DM,” Shahrzad Salmasi, PhD, of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and colleagues wrote in Arthritis Care & Research.

"For people with lupus, preventing type 2 diabetes is critical. Diabetes can lead to many other complications such as neuropathy, cardiovascular disease and kidney failure. Given the clear implications of non-adherence to lupus treatment, future research should focus on developing and testing ways to improve antimalarial adherence," says Mary de Vera, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at UBC and the Canada Research Chair in Medication Adherence.

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