KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDES OF AMERICAN PHYSICIANS AND PUBLIC ABOUT MEDICAL CHRONOBIOLOGY AND CHRONOTHERAPEUTICS - FINDINGS OF 2 1996 GALLUP SURVEYS

Two Gallup telephone interview surveys were conducted during 1996 of 3 20 American primary care physicians and 1011 adults to assess their kn owledge and attitudes about medical chronobiology and chronotherapeuti cs. Of the doctors, 88% claimed to possess at least some familiarity w ith the concept of chronobiology and circadian rhythms; however, many were not often able to identify correctly the time of day or night whe n common medical conditions and events most likely occur or worsen. Fu rthermore, a significant number of doctors believed that chronotherapi es, special dosage forms that proportion medications during the day an d night in synchrony to need with reference to 24h patterns in the int ensity of symptoms and risk of severe medical events, were already bei ng marketed in the United States for angina pectoris, hypertension, re spiratory allergies, and other medical conditions even though this was not the case at the time of the survey. On the other hand, the doctor s were relatively unaware of those chronotherapies that actually did e xist to treat asthma and peptic ulcer disease. American adults also la cked knowledge of temporal patterns in disease and were seldom able to identify the clock time when asthma and myocardial infarction are of greatest risk or when blood pressure is highest. Although neither the American physicians nor adults possessed knowledge of these facts, bot h had a strong positive attitude toward the concept of chronotherapeut ics. Overall, the findings of these Gallup surveys indicate that a mas sive educational effort is necessary immediately to ensure new develop ments in medical chronobiology and chronotherapeutics are correctly co mprehended and properly incorporated by physicians into clinical medic ine and wisely utilized by patients.