Cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit of sumatriptan in patients with migraine

To investigate the cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit of initiating sumatriptan therapy in patients with acute migraine who were previously taking nontriptan drugs.

This is an economic analysis of a prospective, pretest-posttest, observational 6-month outcomes study of 178 patients with a physician diagnosis of migraine who received their first prescription for sumatriptan between October 1994 and August 1996 and were members of a mixed-model managed care organization in western Pennsylvania. Migraine-related resource use data were obtained from the managed care organization's medical and pharmacy claims databases. The primary outcome measure for this economic analysis was the total disability time that patients experienced because of migraine. Patients reported time missed from work and usual nonwork activities because of migraine on self-administered questionnaires at baseline and at 3 and 6 months after initiation of sumatriptan.

Initiation of sumatriptan resulted in a decrease of 662 migraine-disability-days for work and 1236 migraine-disability-days for nonwork activities during the 6 months of the study (decrease from 27.8 to 17.2 days per person), totaling 1898 migraine-disability-days averted with sumatriptan therapy. Migraine-related medical costs were lower after sumatriptan was initiated ($18,351 vs $26,192), whereas migraine-related pharmacy costs were lower with prior nontriptan drug therapy ($22,209 vs $74,861). The overall net cost savings after sumatriptan was initiated in these patients was $222,332 ($1249 per patient) with a benefit-to-cost ratio of $5.67 gained for each health care dollar spent from a societal perspective. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio was $25 for each additional migraine-disability-day averted by using sumatriptan vs nontriptan drug therapy. Sensitivity analysis showed that changes in medical costs had little effect on the ratios and that sumatriptan remained cost-beneficial across a wide range of patient wages.

This study showed that initiation of sumatriptan in patients previously receiving nontriptan therapy was cost-effective and had an economic benefit for patients, employers, and society. Sumatriptan also helped patients and physicians achieve goals recommended by the US Headache Consortium by reducing patients' disability and thus improving their ability to function at work and nonwork activities.