Costs, quality of life and mortality outcomes in United States rheumatoid arthritis patients.

摘要

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.