Incidence, Prevalence, and Real-World Treatment Patterns in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia: Results from a...

Real-world data on usage of 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) are scarce. This study therefore aimed to analyze the use of different TKIs used in 1st- and 2nd-line treatment and the frequency of TKI switches in CML.

This observational study was based on the InGef research database, an anonymized representative claims dataset in Germany (n = 4 million). An incidence and prevalence patient CML cohort was followed for 5 and 3 years. Analyses regarding incidence, prevalence, and therapy distribution were performed descriptively.

151 patients were included in the incidence and 636 patients in the prevalence cohort. This resulted in an incidence of 1.8 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.34-2.20) and a prevalence of 14.9 (95% CI: 13.70-16.03) per 100,000 inhabitants. For the incidence cohort, data on 1st-line therapy were available for 124 patients and distributed across imatinib (N = 52), nilotinib (N = 44), dasatinib (N = 12), chemotherapies as hydroxycarbamide (N = 11), and ponatinib/bosutinib (N = 5). Twenty-six percent of patients switched TKI therapy at least once in 3 years. In the prevalence cohort, 423 patients (66.5%) had claims on existing or newly emerged cardiovascular diseases (CDs). No significant differences (p = 0.32) between TKIs in patients with CD were found.

Every fourth patient switched TKI therapy within the first 3 years after treatment initiation. Switches were more likely when hints of disease progression or intolerability were observable in the database.