A Systematic Review of the Costs of Drug-Associated Acute Kidney Injury and Potential Cost Savings with Nephrotoxin Stewardship Prevention Strategies.

There is a scarcity of information related to the financial impact of acute kidney injury (AKI), and even more so the economics of drug-associated AKI (D-AKI). Our goal was to provide a comprehensive summary of the economic burden of D-AKI by evaluating the costs of D-AKI compared to not developing AKI and cost savings associated with nephrotoxin stewardship approaches. Following the PRISMA guidelines, a literature search was conducted using PubMed to identify articles from database inception through November 2023.

Projecting long-term clinical outcomes with larotrectinib compared with immune checkpoint inhibitors in metastatic nonsmall cell lung cancer and differentiated thyroid cancer.

Background: Larotrectinib is approved for patients with advanced gene fusion-positive solid tumors. Prior studies demonstrated promising results with larotrectinib compared with other systemic therapy. However, comparisons to checkpoint inhibitors, such as nivolumab or pembrolizumab, have not been done.

Association of Opioid and Concurrent Benzodiazepine, Skeletal Muscle Relaxant, and Gabapentinoid Usage on Healthcare Expenditure and Resource Utilization: A Serial Cross-Sectional Study, 2009 to 2019.

Background: Healthcare providers may be utilizing central nervous system (CNS) depressants to reduce opioid use due to recent changes in public policy. Combination use of these agents with opioids increases the risk of respiratory depression and death. Healthcare expenditures by individuals using these drug combinations have not been previously quantified.

Use of Disease-Modifying Treatments in Patients With Sickle Cell Disease.

Importance: Despite hydroxyurea being an established treatment for sickle cell disease (SCD), it remains underused. The recent approval of the disease-modifying treatments (DMTs) l-glutamine, crizanlizumab, and voxelotor underscores the need to understand the uptake of DMTs in the current treatment landscape.

Objective: To explore characteristics that may be associated with DMT use and to describe observed patterns of yearly DMT use from 2014 to 2021.

Community-Based Service Use After Clozapine Treatment: A Mirror-Image Analysis of Public Claims Data.

Although clozapine demonstrates unique efficacy for treatment-resistant schizophrenia, its impact on community-based services remains largely underexplored. The authors examined changes in use of community-based services after clozapine treatment among a sample of 163 patients with schizophrenia by using public claims data in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Mirror-image analyses of service utilization were used to compare the 180-day period before treatment initiation with the 180-day period that began after 6 months of adherent treatment, accounting for age, race, and gender.

The effectiveness and value of AMX0035 and oral edaravone for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: A summary from the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review's Midwest Comparative Effectiveness Public Advisory Council.

Funding for this summary was contributed by Blue Cross Blue Shield of MA, California Healthcare Foundation, The Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation, Arnold Ventures, and Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc., to the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), an independent organization that evaluates the evidence on the value of health care interventions. ICER's annual policy summit is supported by dues from Aetna, America's Health Insurance Plans, AbbVie, Alnylam, AstraZeneca, Biogen, Blue Shield of CA, Boehringer Ingelheim, Cambia Health Services, CVS, Editas, Evolve Pharmacy Solutions, Express Scripts, Genentech/ Roche, GlaxoSmithKline, Harvard Pilgrim, Health Care Service Corporation, Health First, Health Partners, Humana, Johnson & Johnson (Janssen), Kaiser Permanente, LEO Pharma, Mallinckrodt, Merck, Novartis, National Pharmaceutical Council, Pfizer.

Trends in endpoint use in pivotal trials and efficacy for US Food and Drug Administration-approved solid tumor therapies, 1995-2021.

Many cancer therapies are now approved based on surrogate endpoints such as progression-free survival (PFS) to ensure that patients have speedy access to life-saving cancer medicines. However, the link between surrogate endpoints and overall survival (OS) is not well established in many cancers. To characterize trends in endpoints used in pivotal trials leading to approval for US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved solid tumor therapies and their efficacy from 1995 to 2021.

Cost Effectiveness of Allogeneic Umbilical Cord Blood-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Patients with Knee Osteoarthritis.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the cost effectiveness of allogeneic umbilical cord blood-derived mesenchymal stem cells with sodium hyaluronate (hUCB-MSC) compared with microfracture in patients with knee cartilage defects caused by osteoarthritis (OA) in South Korea.

Methods: A partitioned survival model approach was taken consisting of five mutually exclusive health states: excellent, good, fair, poor, and death over a 20-year time horizon. Utility values were obtained from a randomized clinical trial.

Comparative effectiveness of larotrectinib versus entrectinib for the treatment of metastatic gene fusion cancers.

To extrapolate clinical trial results to estimate and compare expected progression-free and overall life years (LYs) and quality-adjusted LYs (QALYs) for larotrectinib and entrectinib in patients with colorectal cancer (CRC), soft tissue sarcoma (STS) and brain metastases prior to treatment with larotrectinib or entrectinib. A naive direct comparison of larotrectinib versus entrectinib was made using partitioned survival modeling methods from clinical trial data. Larotrectinib resulted in an additional 1.

A Computational Framework to Characterize the Cancer Drug Induced Effect on Aging Using Transcriptomic Data.

Cancer treatments such as chemotherapies may change or accelerate aging trajectories in cancer patients. Emerging evidence has shown that "omics" data can be used to study molecular changes of the aging process. Here, we integrated the drug-induced and normal aging transcriptomic data to computationally characterize the potential cancer drug-induced aging process in patients.

Patterns of Utilization and Expenditure Across Multiple Sclerosis Disease-Modifying Therapies: A Retrospective Cohort Study Using Claims Data from a Commercially Insured Population in the United States, 2010-2019.

Introduction: Comparisons of healthcare utilization and expenditure among multiple sclerosis (MS) disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) are limited.

Methods: In this retrospective cohort study using commercial insurance claims data of a US population (2010-2019), we compared healthcare utilization and costs in MS across different DMTs. We assigned patients to different treatment arms: no DMT (ND), high-efficacy (HE) DMT (alemtuzumab, B cell depletion, cladribine, and natalizumab), and standard-efficacy (SE) DMT (dimethyl fumarate, glatiramer acetate, interferon beta, sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor modulator, and teriflunomide).

Consensus Obtained for the Nephrotoxic Potential of 167 Drugs in Adult Critically Ill Patients Using a Modified Delphi Method.

Introduction: The approach to evaluating nephrotoxins in studies of drug-associated acute kidney injury varies. Some studies use a list of under ten drugs for evaluation whereas others include over 100 drugs. Drugs are typically assigned a binary classification, nephrotoxic or not nephrotoxic.

The potential long-term comparative effectiveness of larotrectinib vs standard of care for treatment of metastatic TRK fusion thyroid cancer, colorectal cancer, and soft tissue sarcoma.

Larotrectinib is approved for patients with metastatic TRK fusion cancers, including differentiated thyroid (DTC), colorectal cancer (CRC), and soft tissue sarcoma (STS). Given the basket clinical trial design of larotrectinib, direct comparisons against standard of care in each of the mentioned cancers have not been assessed. Also, owing to the limited duration of follow-up in clinical trials, long-term outcomes for treatments are generally not known or estimated.

Latent Class Analysis of Prescribing Behavior of Primary Care Physicians in the Veterans Health Administration.

Background: Benzodiazepines, opioids, proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs), and antibiotics are frequently prescribed inappropriately by primary care physicians (PCPs), without sufficient consideration of alternative options or adverse effects. We hypothesized that distinct groups of PCPs could be identified based on their propensity to prescribe these medications.

Objective: To identify PCP groups based on their propensity to prescribe benzodiazepines, opioids, PPIs, and antibiotics, and patient and PCP characteristics associated with identified prescribing patterns.

Trends in healthcare expenditures and resource utilization among a nationally representative population with opioids in the United States: a serial cross-sectional study, 2008 to 2017.

Background: Previous reports on healthcare costs and expenditures associated with populations prescribed an opioid primarily focused on populations who chronically use opioids or have opioid use disorder. However, studies that characterize the healthcare and expenditures costs among the wider number of people prescribed opioids in a nationally representative population are unavailable. We sought to characterize the healthcare costs and expenditures associated with a population prescribed an opioid in the U.

Cost-effectiveness of opicapone and entacapone in reducing OFF-time in Parkinson's disease patients treated with levodopa/carbidopa.

Aims: To assess from a US payer perspective the relative cost-effectiveness of the catechol--methyltransferase inhibitors opicapone and entacapone when used adjunctively to levodopa/carbidopa (LD/CD) in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), based on the drugs' effects to reduce absolute OFF-time hours in PD patients.

Materials And Methods: A Markov model was created to estimate cost-effectiveness of adjunctive opicapone treatment compared with adjunctive entacapone treatment in a synthetic cohort of 1,000 patients with PD taking LD/CD. Clinical inputs were derived from clinical trials, published literature, and expert opinion.

A systematic review of cost-effectiveness analyses across the acute kidney injury landscape.

: Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a complex and common condition associated with increased morbidity, mortality, and costs. Evidence from cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) have targeted various aspects of AKI including detection with biomarkers, treatment with renal replacement therapy, and prevention when using contrast media. However, there has not been a systematic review of these studies across the entirety of AKI.

International Price Comparisons of Anticancer Drugs: A Scheme for Improving Patient Accessibility.

Background: The demand for implementing a new listing scheme to expedite patient access to novel oncology drugs has increased in South Korea. This study was conducted to compare the prices of anticancer drugs between eight countries and to explore the feasibility of a 'pre-listing and post-evaluation' scheme to expedite patient access to oncology drugs.

Methods: This study included 34 anticancer drugs, which were reimbursed between 1 January 2007 and 31 December 2017.

Effect of Treatment with the PD-1/PD-L1 Inhibitors on Key Health Outcomes of Cancer Patients.

Background: Recent studies have shown that treatment with the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1)/programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) inhibitor class could significantly improve survival outcomes in several oncology indications. However, there is some clinical uncertainty.

Objective: This study aimed to obtain high-level estimates of the impact of treatment with PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitor class to oncology treatment on key health outcomes in real-world situations and to inform public health policy decisions about cancer care after reducing uncertainties around new immuno-oncology therapy options in South Korea.

Effectiveness of Gastric Bypass Versus Gastric Sleeve for Cardiovascular Disease: Protocol and Baseline Results for a Comparative Effectiveness Study.

Background: When compared with conventional weight loss strategies, bariatric surgery results in substantially greater durable weight loss and rates of disease remission.

Objective: The ENGAGE CVD (Effectiveness of Gastric Bypass versus Gastric Sleeve for Cardiovascular Disease) cohort study aimed to provide population-based, comprehensive, rigorous evidence for clinical and policy decision making regarding the choice between gastric bypass and gastric sleeve for overall cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk reduction, risk factor remission, and safety.

Methods: The cohort had 22,095 weight loss surgery patients from a large integrated health care system in Southern California assembled from 2009 to 2016 who were followed up through 2018.