Abstract
Introduction
Familial hypercholesterolemia is a common genetic condition that significantly increases an individual’s risk of cardiovascular events such as heart attack, stroke, and cardiac death and is a candidate for population-wide screening programs. Economic analyses of strategies to identify and treat familial hypercholesterolemia are limited by a lack of real-world cost estimates for screening services and medications for reducing cardiovascular risk in this population.
Methods
We estimated the cost of lipid panel testing in patients with hyperlipidemia and the cost of statins, ezetimibe, and PCKS9 inhibitors in patients with familial hypercholesterolemia from a commercial claims database and report costs and charges per panel and prescription by days’ supply.
Results
The mean cost for a 90-day supply for statins was $183.33, 2.3 times the mean cost for a 30-day supply at $79.35. PCSK9 inhibitors generated the highest mean costs among medications used by patients with familial hypercholesterolemia.
Conclusions
Lipid testing and lipid-lowering medications for cardiovascular disease prevention generate substantial real-world costs which can be used to improve cost-effectiveness models of familial hypercholesterolemia screening and care management.
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Conflict of interest
LEP has received predoctoral fellowship funding from Bristol Myers Squibb. MCR’s spouse holds stock in Merck and Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Funding
The project described was supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), National Institutes of Health, through Grant Award Number UM1TR004406. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.
Research involving human participants
The use of individual-level data was granted an exemption of human subjects review by the institutional Office of Human Research Ethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Study Number 21-2979).
Author contributions
LEP and MCR contributed to the study conception and design, funding acquisition, and data interpretation. LEP conducted data collection and analysis. LEP drafted the original manuscript and LEP and MCR conducted writing review and editing.
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Due to legal and commercial restrictions around the use of the commercial claims database for research, the supporting data is not publicly available.
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Passero, L.E., Roberts, M.C. Measuring Costs of Cardiovascular Disease Prevention for Patients with Familial Hypercholesterolemia in Administrative Claims Data. High Blood Press Cardiovasc Prev 31, 215–219 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40292-024-00624-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40292-024-00624-6