The Relationship between Lifestyle and Costs Related to Medicine Use in Adults

Abstract

Background The unhealthy lifestyle is growing and this can have repercussions on health status demanding actions on the occurrence of diseases and leads to increased expenses. Objective To examine the interrelationship between the costs of medicine use and lifestyle behaviors. Methods A cohort study with 118 participants, age around 51.7 ± 7.1 years old. It was collected personal and anthropometric data and information about medicine of continuous use to calculate the costs. Lifestyle variables included habitual physical activity (PA) assessed by pedometer, sedentary behavior by Baecke questionnaire, sleep quality by mini sleep questionnaire and self-report of smoke and alcohol consumption. Statistical analyses were performed by BioEstat (version 5.2) and the significance level set at p-value < 0.05. Results In 12 months, 62 subjects bought 172 medicines, representing an overall cost of US$ 3,087.01. Expenditures with drugs were negatively related to PA (r = -0.194, p-value = 0.035 and r = -0.281, p-value = 0.002), but positively related with sleep quality (r = 0.299, p-value=0.001 and r = 0.315, p-value = 0.001) and age (r = 0.274, p-value = 0.003). Four multivariate models were executed considering lifestyle behaviors in different moments of cohort and medicine costs, and all these models identify important relationship between lifestyle behaviors with expenditures with drugs. Conclusion Worse sleep quality seems to increase the costs related to medicine use in adults, while obesity and ageing play a relevant role in this phenomenon and alcohol consumption seems a variable with relevant economic impact.

Moderating Effect of Vigorous Physical Activity on Health Care Costs among Adolescents: ABCD Growth Study

“…Medication accounted for 54.5% of all health care costs in our sample, while the study by Idler et al [34] counted health care costs for primary and secondary care but not medication. Similarly, the inverse relationship between physical activity (number of steps) and costs attributed to medicine has also been identi ed in 40-65 year-old adults [35].…”

Relationship between vigorous physical activity and health care costs among adolescents: ABCD Growth Study

“…Medication accounted for 54.5% of all health care costs in our sample, while the study by Idler et al [ 15 ] counted health care costs for primary and secondary care but not medication. Similarly, the inverse relationship between physical activity (number of steps) and costs attributed to medicine has also been identified in 40–65 year-old adults [ 39 ].…”

Impact of sports participation on incidence of bone traumatic fractures and health-care costs among adolescents: ABCD – Growth Study

“…Kruskal-Wallis test was used to compare health care costs according to different sports. Some variables adjusted multivariate models (general linear model and cox regression), while these variables were identified as potential correlates due to its impact on either health care costs or fractures [23,24]. We assessed the risk of traumatic fractures according to the sports participation and controlling for covariates (sex, age, body fatness, somatic maturation, BMD and CRP) using Cox Regression (Hazard Ratio [HR] and its 95%CI).…”