SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 14 (UPI) -- Heart patients who most frequently miss a dose of medication are more than twice as likely to suffer heart attack, stroke and death, a U.S. study found.
Study co-author Dr. Mary Whooley of the University of California at San Francisco found more than 8 percent of the 1,015 patients surveyed said they fail to take their medicine at least 25 percent of the time.
The patients were then tracked for almost four years to see who died and who had survived a heart attack or stroke. The study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found those who admitted not taking their medication more than 25 percent of the time were 2.3 times more likely to suffer serious problems -- including death -- than those who did.
Almost 14 percent of patients who more regularly took their medications experienced cardiac events, compared with about 23 percent of those who more frequently skipped doses.
"Honestly, it's not really rocket science," Whooley said in a statement. "It's pretty intuitive that if you don't take your medications, you won't do as well."
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