Understanding Costs of Infusion Disease-Modifying Drugs for Treatment of Multiple Sclerosis

According to data presented at the MS Virtual 2020: 8th Joint ACTRIMS-ECTRIMS Meeting, researchers say that costs should play a more important role in economic analyses for disease-modifying drugs (DMDs) in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS).

Currently, data regarding overall costs of administering DMDs for patients with MS is limited, prompting Amy Philips, senior director, health economics & outcomes research data generation & analytics, EMD Serono, Inc, and colleagues to conduct a study evaluating real-world, per-patient, per-day costs.

Patient data from the IQVIA RWD Adjudicated Claims–US database was used in the analysis. The final study included 3236 patients that met the following criteria: an MS diagnosis, billed medical claims for an infusion DMD between January 1, 2017 and September 30, 2018, between the ages 18 to 65 years, ≥12 months pre-index eligibility (index=first infusion claim). Patients with infusion DMDs during <12-month pre-index, a DMD that was billed as National Drug Code (NDC) claim, or DMD costs or administration costs potentially out-of-range were excluded from analyses. Primary outcome was the average non-DMD cost per patient by cost category and by DMD.

Of the final cohort (n=3236), the top infusion DMD treatments were: natalizumab 737 [22.8%]; ocrelizumab: 2207 [68.2%]; alemtuzumab: 292 [9.0%] with mean total non-DMD costs for all medical codes billed were $597, $902, $1308, respectively.

“Costs for administration per patient were $1178 for alemtuzumab, $808 for ocrelizumab, and $468 for natalizumab,” found the researchers. “The next most costly categories were co-administration (alemtuzumab $93, ocrelizumab $63, natalizumab $54), MS-related (alemtuzumab $6, ocrelizumab $20, natalizumab $27), potentially MS-related (alemtuzumab $19, ocrelizumab $5, natalizumab $20), and unrelated (alemtuzumab $13, ocrelizumab $6, natalizumab $26).”

The researchers concluded: “Costs associated with administering infusion DMDs among patients with MS in the US should be considered in economic analyses.”

—Edan Stanley

Reference:
Kozma C, Roberts N, Phillips A. Real-world patient-level costs of administering infusion disease-modifying drugs: a US retrospective claims database analysis. Posted presented at the MS Virtual 2020: 8th Joint ACTRIMS-ECTRIMS Meeting; September 11-13, 2020; virtual.