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Cost-effectiveness of alemtuzumab in the treatment of relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis in the United States
Objective
To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of alemtuzumab compared with fingolimod, natalizumab, ocrelizumab, and generic glatiramer acetate 20 mg among patients with relapsing multiple sclerosis (RMS) in the United States.
Study Design
Markov model with annual periods from payer perspective.
Methods
The modeled population represented pooled patients from the CARE-MS I and II trials. Therapies’ comparative efficacy at reducing relapses and slowing disability worsening was obtained from network meta-analyses. Safety information was extracted from package inserts. Withdrawal rates, treatment waning, resource use, cost, and utility inputs were derived from published studies and clinical expert opinion. To project the natural history of disease worsening, data from the British Columbia cohort was used.
Results
Alemtuzumab dominated comparators by accumulating higher total quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) (8.977) and lower total costs ($421 996) compared with fingolimod (7.955; $1 085 814), natalizumab (8.456; $1 048 599), ocrelizumab (8.478; $908 365), and generic glatiramer acetate (7.845; $895 661) over a 20-year time horizon. Alemtuzumab’s dominance was primarily driven by savings in treatment costs because alemtuzumab has long-term duration of response and is initially administered as 2 annual courses, with 36.1% of patients requiring retreatment over 5 years, whereas comparators are used chronically. In model scenarios where alemtuzumab’s long-term duration of response was assumed not to hold and therapy had to be administered annually, probabilistic sensitivity analyses showed that alemtuzumab remained cost-effective versus ocrelizumab at a willingness-to-pay threshold of $100 000/QALY in 74% to 100% of model runs.
Conclusions
Alemtuzumab was a cost-effective therapy. Model results should be used to optimize clinical and managed care decisions for effective RMS treatment.
Authors
V Chirikov, I Ma, N Joshi, D Patel, A Smith, C Giambrone, N Cornelio, L Hashemi
Journal
Value in Health
Therapeutic Area
Neurology
Center of Excellence
Health Economic Modeling & Meta-analysis
Year
2018
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