Costs, Quality of Life and Mortality Outcomes in United States Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients
- ISBN-10
- 0542895080
- ISBN-13
- 9780542895081
- Pages
- 300
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2006
- Author
- Kaleb Dean Michaud
Description
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic progressive autoimmune disease affecting approximately 1% of the US population. RA is characterized by joint inflammation which leads to progressive disability, increased morbidity and increased mortality over time. Since 1998 several effective and expensive (∼15,000/year) biological therapies have been approved to treat RA. This new "biologic era" in RA treatment has heralded the need for updated burden-of-illness studies as their economic and disease impact on the RA population is unknown. Using data from the National Data Bank for Rheumatic Diseases (NDB), an ongoing, long-term observational study of arthritis outcomes, three important outcomes in RA were analyzed: (1) direct medical costs including their predictors and effects of biologic therapy; (2) indirect quality of life over time and in comparison with US mean values; and (3) effect of RA on mortality compared with national death rates and effect of biologic treatments on mortality.
