Conference Coverage
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SAN FRANCISCO – Patients with noncirrhotic chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection incur high medical costs in the three years following their diagnosis. However, early initiation of oral direct-acting therapies is associated with significant medical cost savings, largely driven by reduced extrahepatic manifestations.
Doug Brunk/MDedge News
Dr. Carol Bao
Those are key findings from an analysis of “real-world” claims data that Carol Bao, PhD, presented on behalf of senior author Patrice Cacoub, MD, during a poster session at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.
“This [study] highlights the importance of treating HCV patients early, especially with active therapies, because that will benefit not only their liver disease but, from a population health perspective, you are lifting the entire health of those patients as well,” Dr. Bao, senior director of health economics and outcomes research at AbbVie, North Chicago, said in an interview.
In an effort to quantify the health care cost savings associated with initiation of direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapies within 2 years of the first chronic HCV (CHC) diagnosis among noncirrhotic patients in the United States, the researchers drew from Clinformatics Data Mart, a diverse health care database with longitudinal data for more than 15 million lives each year. They collected data between Jan. 1, 2009, and Jan. 31, 2016, and excluded patients followed for less than 6 months before the CHC diagnosis or less than 1 year after the CHC diagnosis, as well as those who received interferon/ribavirin therapy before their first DAA. This yielded a sample of 3,069 adults first diagnosed with CHC on or after 2013.
The index date was defined as the data of the first CHC diagnosis and researchers established two cohorts: 852 patients who initiated DAAs in the 3 years postindex date and 2,217 who did not receive any CHC treatment in the 3 years postindex date.
Outcomes of interest included all-cause and disease-specific medical costs measured yearly up to 3 years post index. These included costs related to CHC management or hepatic complications as well as those related to extrahepatic manifestations (EHMs) such as fatigue, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
Patients in the DAA-treated group were slightly older than those in the untreated group (a median age of 52.6 vs. 50.9 years, respectively; P less than .001) and had a higher proportion of men (65.1% vs. 60.7%; P = .07). They were also diagnosed more recently and had more advanced fibrosis at baseline. In the first 3 years post index, the researchers found that the average medical costs incurred in the DAA-treated and untreated groups were $28,392 and $42,914, respectively. On multivariate regression analyses, total all-cause medical costs were statistically lower across DAA-treated years than across the untreated years: $6,379 per year on average, because of savings related to health care for EHMs ($3,158 per year on average) and diagnoses other than CHC, hepatitis, or EHMs considered in this study ($4,638 per year on average).
When Dr. Bao and her colleagues conducted post hoc exploratory analyses of the $4,638 per year cost differences for diagnoses other than CHC, hepatic, or the EMHs considered, they determined that they appear to be driven by diagnoses related to the circulatory system (especially essential hypertension), respiratory system, blood/immune/endocrine systems, and claims with diagnoses that were not disease specific.
Dr. Bao acknowledged certain limitations of the study, including the potential for errors and omissions associated with claims data and that costs were recorded as charged amounts, which may be different from the amount actually paid. In addition, the fibrosis level could not be inferred for all patients.
AbbVie provided funding for the study, which received a “poster of distinction” award at the meeting. The company employs Dr. Bao and two of the study coauthors.