Cost effectiveness of therapeutic interventions in ankylosing spondylitis: a critical and systematic review

This report reviews the cost effectiveness of different therapeutic interventions used in the treatment of ankylosing spondylitis (AS).

We performed a systematic search of the databases MEDLINE via PubMed, EMBASE and the Cochrane Library and used hand-searching to identify articles on cost effectiveness of therapies for adult patients with AS published up to November 2010.

Of 135 articles, 13 studies were analysed. Two articles were on physical therapies, one article was on NSAIDs and ten articles were on tumour necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitors (infliximab = 6, etanercept = 2, infliximab and etanercept = 1 and adalimumab = 1). Of the latter, no article directly compared TNF inhibitors. Articles showed substantial heterogeneity in methodological approaches and thus results, which prevented us from any extensive comparison, data pooling or meta-analysis. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) for spa-exercise treatment was &U20AC;7465 (95% CI 3294, 14 686) per QALY. The ICERs for infliximab, etanercept and adalimumab were &U20AC;5307-237 010, &U20AC;29 815-123 761 and &U20AC;7344-33 303 per QALY, respectively.

Modelling treatment strategies in chronic relapsing diseases such as AS presents specific challenges, as reflected in the variation in the cost-effectiveness results reported. Although quite variable, the cost-effectiveness ratios for AS therapies remain within an acceptable range.