Response by Lank et al to Letter Regarding Article, “Ethnic Differences in 90-Day Poststroke Medication Adherence”

Schwartz and Unni raise concerns (medication adherence self-report and the definition of medication adherence) they believe contribute to type II error and challenge the validity of our finding of no differences in medication adherence between Non-Hispanic Whites and Mexican Americans 90 days post-stroke¹. These points were fully discussed in our article with a call for future research. Further, our study population in Nueces County, Texas is non-immigrant, overwhelmingly English-speaking Mexican Americans, and therefore may not share similar adherence profiles with other immigrant Hispanic populations. While Schwartz and Unni suggest that our study may overestimate medication adherence, we concluded that medication adherence post-stroke is low for both Mexican Americans and Non-Hispanic whites. Most importantly, this provides an important opportunity for intervention to prevent second stroke.