Effect of a Daily Text Messaging and Directly Supervised Therapy Intervention on Oral Mercaptopurine Adherence in Children With Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Bhatia S, Hageman L, Chen Y, Wong FL, McQuaid EL, Duncan C, Mascarenhas L, Freyer D, Mba N, Aristizabal P, Walterhouse D, Lew G, Kempert PH, Russell TB, McNall-Knapp RY, Jacobs S, Dang H, Raetz E, Relling MV, Landier W. Effect of a Daily Text Messaging and Directly Supervised Therapy Intervention on Oral Mercaptopurine Adherence in Children With Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Netw Open. 2020 Aug 3;3(8):e2014205. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.14205. PubMed PMID: 32852553; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC7453312.

Suboptimal adherence to oral mercaptopurine treatment in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) increases the risk of relapse. A frequently expressed barrier to adherence is forgetfulness, which is often overcome by parental vigilance. To determine whether a multicomponent intervention, compared with education alone, will result in a higher proportion of patients with ALL who have mercaptopurine adherence rates 95% or higher, for all study participants and among patients younger than 12 years and vs those aged 12 years and older.