The secondary objective was to estimate the ability of this questionnaire to predict treatment discontinuation or persistence. Methods The study was performed in France during 2008. The questionnaire was developed in a population of women with post-menopausal osteoporosis consulting a primary care physician and treated for osteoporosis in the previous 6 months. The study includes a cross-sectional phase and a prospective phase. In the cross-sectional phase, ICG-001 order data was collected at the study visit, both from a questionnaire provided to the patient and from patient

records. In the prospective phase, prescription data were collected over the 9 www.selleckchem.com/products/R788(Fostamatinib-disodium).html months following the index consultation. Ethics The survey protocol was submitted for evaluation to the CCTIRS (National Ethics Advisory Board). They considered that participation of patients in the study would not affect their medical care and therefore it was not necessary to obtain formal Ethics Committee approval or to collect signed informed consent from each patient. The only requirement stipulated was that formal information on the goals and methods of the study be provided for each patient. Analyses performed using the Thalès database have been approved by the Commission Nationale de L’informatique et des Libertés (CNIL). Participating

physicians The study was performed through the participation of 286 general practitioners (GPs) belonging to the Thalès network. This is a computerised network of 1,200 GPs who contribute exhaustive anonymous data on patient consultations and treatment to a centralised electronic database, selleck kinase inhibitor allowing subsequent follow-up of outcomes. GPs participating in the Thalès network are selected to be representative of the French GP population according to three main criteria, namely geographical area,

age, and gender. Activity and prescription habits of the panel have also been compared a posteriori with national data and shown to be representative [26]. The database currently includes records for >1.6 million patients, routinely collected since 2002. The Thalès database Clomifene has been demonstrated to be a reliable source of information in numerous previous studies in rheumatology [26–28] and in other fields of medicine [29–32]. For each patient, information on disease status and medication prescription is entered directly into the database by the physician at the time of the consultation. No information as to the reasons for making individual diagnostic or prescription choices is however provided. The disease status is encoded using terms from a specific thesaurus of symptoms and disease entities adapted from the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) system. Prescription data contain the dispensed drug name (commercial and international common denomination), the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) classification category, dose regimens and prescription duration.