[Economic evaluation of antiviral treatment for chronic hepatitis B: a systematic review]

To revise the available evidence on the cost-effectiveness of antiviral regimens for treatment of chronic hepatitis B.

We performed a systematic revision on MEDLINE, LILACS NICE and COCHRANE databases, searching for economic evaluations of antiviral regimens for treatment of chronic hepatitis B. We included original studies, systematic revisions and management guidelines including information on the cost-effectiveness of this treatment. We registered the characteristics and results of the retrieved documents.

We obtained 29 original papers, 4 revision articles and 4 management guidelines. Most of these publications have been done in the last 5 years. There was conflict of interest in 73% of original articles, due to authors working for the pharmaceutical industry. 93% of articles that evaluate the cost-effectiveness of giving treatment for chronic hepatitis B against management of its complications find that it is indeed cost-effective to give antiviral treatment. 3/6 studies that evaluate lamivudine against other drugs find it as a dominant strategy, 3/5 find entecavir as the dominant strategy, 1/1 find tenofovir dominant, ¼ find conventional interferon as dominant and none of them find adefovir or pegylated interferon as dominant strategies.

We consider that the available evidence suggests that to give antiviral treatment for chronic hepatitis B is a cost-effective intervention for many health systems, including ours. It has varying indexes of cost-effectiveness according to the evaluated regimens. Ideally , we should perform local economic evaluations in this issue.