Nearly half of young adults with skin disease skip prescribed drugs

<p>Background</p><p>Atopic dermatitis (AD) affects individuals of all ages, and the first-line treatment are emollients and topical corticosteroids. There is insufficient knowledge about factors possibly affecting the drug utilization of young adults with AD.</p><p>Objectives</p><p>To describe the drug utilization of young adults with AD in relation to sex, socio-economic status and disease severity.</p><p>Methods</p><p>A cross-sectional study based on the 24-year follow-up from the population-based BAMSE (Children, Allergy, Milieu, Stockholm, Epidemiology Survey) birth cohort linked with dispensing data from the National Drug Register (<em>n</em> = 2912). Self-reported AD and socio-economic status were defined from questionnaire data and disease severity was determined through the clinical examination and Patient-Oriented Eczema Measure questionnaire.</p><p>Results</p><p>The prevalence of AD in young adults was 17.7% (<em>n</em> = 516) and 45.5% of them were dispensed at least one drug for the treatment of AD during the study period (January 2016 to June 2019). Topical corticosteroids (TCS) were the most common drugs (32.9%) followed by emollients (21.7%). A larger proportion of men were dispensed TCS than women (39.0% vs. 29.1%: <em>p</em>-value = 0.020). A larger proportion of young adults with moderate-to-severe AD were dispensed TCS than those with mild AD (52.6% vs. 35.3%: <em>p</em>-value = 0.026). No one was dispensed the recommended amount of emollients and less than five individuals were dispensed the recommended amount of TCS for mild disease. Male sex (adj.OR 1.54, 95% CI 1.06–2.34) and moderate-to-severe AD (adj.OR 2.62, 95% CI 1.59–4.31) were associated with dispensation of TCS.</p><p>Conclusions</p><p>A large proportion of young adults with AD was undertreated or untreated. Sex and disease severity did affect the dispensing patterns of investigated drugs.</p>