Impact of Pharmacist Intervention on Lipid Profile in Diabetic Patients: a Multi-Centre Randomized Control Study

The impact of pharmacists is well established for patient drug therapy, appropriateness, effectiveness, and the patient compliance towards the treatment plan. In Malaysia, pharmacists are providing these services in DMTAC clinics in all public tertiary care hospitals. The objective was to evaluate the impact of pharmacist educational intervention on lipid profile in diabetic patients at different public and tertiary care hospitals in Malaysia. The control group contained 200 patients who were receiving usual treatment from hospitals whereas intervention group contained those 200 patients who were receiving usual treatment from hospitals together with separate counselling sessions with pharmacists from DMTAC clinics. Among these 400 selected patients only 299 patients completed the study for one year and 4 visits prospectively for both study groups. The data analysis was done using the SPSS version 24. Descriptive data is expressed as mean +/- standard deviation (SD). The normality of the data was determined by SPSS using skewness and kurtosis testing. If data showed normal distribution, then independent t-test statistic/Two-way ANOVA was used to evaluate the null hypothesis. A value of p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. At the end of the study, a more significant reduction in HbA1c level was observed in the intervention group than the control group patients (3.59% vs. 2.17%; p < 0.001). Statistically, a significant reduction was observed in cholesterol level (0.13mmol/L) of intervention groups (p< 0.001). With the intervention of pharmacist, not only the HbA1c was improved but hypertension in comorbidity also improved in patients. In the end, the intervention group of diabetic patients belongs to a pharmacist from the DMTAC department shows significant improvement not only in HbA1c but also on lipid profile of diabetes mellitus.