Estimating the annual economic burden for the management of patients with transthyretin amyloid polyneuropathy in Spain.

Background: Transthyretin amyloid polyneuropathy (ATTR-PN) is a fatal disease associated with substantial burden of illness. Three therapies are approved by the European Medicines Agency for the management of this rare disease. The aim of this study was to compare the total annual treatment specific cost per-patient associated with ATTR-PN in Spain.Methods: An Excel-based patient burden and cost estimator tool was developed to itemize direct and indirect costs related to treatment with inotersen, patisiran, and tafamidis in the context of ATTR-PN. The product labels and feedback from five Spanish ATTR-PN experts were used to inform resource use and cost inputs.Results: Marked differences in costs were observed between the three therapies. The need for patisiran- and inotersen-treated patients to visit hospitals for pre-treatment, administration, and monitoring was associated with increased patient burden and costs compared to those treated with tafamidis. Drug acquisition costs per-patient per-year were 291,076€ (inotersen), 427,250€ (patisiran) and 129,737€ (tafamidis) and accounted for the majority of total costs. Overall, the total annual per-patient costs were lowest for patients treated with tafamidis (137,954€), followed by inotersen (308,358€), and patisiran (458,771€).Conclusions: Treating patients with tafamidis leads to substantially lower costs and patient burden than with inotersen or patisiran.

Tafamidis: A Novel Treatment for Transthyretin Amyloid Cardiomyopathy.

Transthyretin (TTR) amyloid cardiomyopathy is a life-threatening condition in which amyloid fibrils accumulate in the heart, eventually leading to cardiac symptomatology and death. To date, treatment of this condition has been directed at symptom relief due to a lack of effective treatment options which target the cause of the disease. The discovery that amyloid deposition was a result of dissociation of the TTR protein structure allowed for the development of tafamidis, which acts by stabilizing the TTR tetramer. Due to the rare nature of the disease, there is limited clinical trial data with tafamidis, with the largest clinical trial enrolling only 441 patients. Nonetheless, that trial demonstrated tafamidis to reduce all-cause mortality as well as cardiovascular hospitalizations compared to placebo with a comparable adverse effect profile, although not all subgroups of patients received benefit. The United States Food and Drug Administration subsequently granted Fast Track review status to tafamidis, leading to its approval in May 2019. Important questions still remain, however, such as which patient groups will receive the most benefit with this drug, how the exceptionally high cost of the drug will be handled by third-party payers, and how the therapeutic role of tafamidis will evolve as competing or perhaps complementary medications complete their ongoing clinical trials and move into the marketplace.

Cost-Effectiveness of Tafamidis Therapy for Transthyretin Amyloid Cardiomyopathy.

BACKGROUND: In patients with transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy, tafamidis reduces all-cause mortality and cardiovascular hospitalizations and slows decline in quality of life compared with placebo. In May 2019, tafamidis received expedited approval from the US Food and Drug Administration as a breakthrough drug for a rare disease. However, at $225 000 per year, it is the most expensive cardiovascular drug ever launched in the United States, and its long-term cost-effectiveness and budget impact are uncertain. We therefore aimed to estimate the cost-effectiveness of tafamidis and its potential effect on US health care spending. METHODS: We developed a Markov model of patients with wild-type or variant transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy and heart failure (mean age, 74.5 years) using inputs from the ATTR-ACT trial (Transthyretin Amyloidosis Cardiomyopathy Clinical Trial), published literature, US Food and Drug Administration review documents, healthcare claims, and national survey data. We compared no disease-specific treatment ("usual care") with tafamidis therapy. The model reproduced 30-month survival, quality of life, and cardiovascular hospitalization rates observed in ATTR-ACT; future projections used a parametric survival model in the control arm, with constant hazards reduction in the tafamidis arm. We discounted future costs and quality-adjusted life-years by 3% annually and examined key parameter uncertainty using deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses. The main outcomes were lifetime incremental cost-effectiveness ratio and annual budget impact, assessed from the US healthcare sector perspective. This study was independent of the ATTR-ACT trial sponsor. RESULTS: Compared with usual care, tafamidis was projected to add 1.29 (95% uncertainty interval, 0.47-1.75) quality-adjusted life-years at an incremental cost of $1 135 000 (872 000-1 377 000), resulting in an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of $880 000 (697 000-1 564 000) per quality-adjusted life-year gained. Assuming a threshold of $100 000 per quality-adjusted life-year gained and current drug price, tafamidis was cost-effective in 0% of 10 000 probabilistic simulations. A 92.6% price reduction from $225 000 to $16 563 would be necessary to make tafamidis cost-effective at $100 000/quality-adjusted life-year. Results were sensitive to assumptions related to long-term effectiveness of tafamidis. Treating all eligible patients with transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy in the United States with tafamidis (n=120 000) was estimated to increase annual healthcare spending by $32.3 billion. CONCLUSIONS: Treatment with tafamidis is projected to produce substantial clinical benefit but would greatly exceed conventional cost-effectiveness thresholds at the current US list price. On the basis of recent US experience with high-cost cardiovascular medications, access to and uptake of this effective therapy may be limited unless there is a large reduction in drug costs.