In our study, we were able to assess the pattern of AD medications granted by the Brazilian health system in the state of RS. We showed that although these medications are available to all patients through the Brazilian public health system, there is a clear disparity between regions. Previous Brazilian studies had already shown that there was some disparity in the supply of these medication, but none of them had evaluated a whole state or attempted to assess factors related to possible disparities7,12; moreover, the evaluation through spatial autocorrelation is innovative in this regard, since it is the first time that an ecological approach had been performed to evaluate the spatial distribution of drugs for AD.
We showed that the number of patients/100,000 inhabitants did not have a random pattern (Moran’s I of 0.17562, P < .001), with the north and northeast regions having more…
