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Published on: October 4, 2024
Real-world treatment patterns in patients with dysmenorrhea in Japan: a retrospective database study
Daisuke Goto1, Masahiko Uchiyama2, Amy Zhao1
1Organon, Jersey City, NJ, United States.
Background:
Dysmenorrhea poses significant disease burden beyond menstruation pain but patients are known to be undertreated.
Objective:
To describe treatment patterns after the diagnosis of dysmenorrhea using health insurance claims data from insured members in Japan.
Methods:
We analyzed treatment patterns following the diagnosis of dysmenorrhea in women aged 18-45 years using health insurance claims from multiple Japanese health insurance societies between January 1, 2017 and September 30, 2022. We examined the first-line and subsequent treatment lines up to the third line treatments.
Results:
A total of 70,981 patients were identified, with a mean age of 29.7 years old. The most common first-line treatments and their median [interquartile range] durations were as follows: low-dose estrogen-progestin (LEP; otherwise known as combined oral contraceptive) in 33,169 patients (46.7%) for 161 [65, 384] days, analgesics/hemostatic agents (symptomatic therapy) in 13,619 patients (19.2%) for 9 [5, 29] days, and Kampo medicine (Chinese traditional herbal medicine adapted to and evolved in Japan) in 10,835 patients (15.3%) for 62 [29, 134] days. Across the treatment sequences from the first to third lines, LEP was the most frequently prescribed therapy. The most frequent pattern was LEP plus analgesics/hemostatic agents (18,019; 25.4%), followed by LEP monotherapy (10,389;14.6%), which collectively accounted for approximately 40% of all treatments. Analgesics/hemostatic agents alone accounted for 8,523 (12.0%) and Kampo medicine alone for 4,806 (6.8%). The transition from analgesics/hemostatic agents to LEP occurred in 2,166 (3.1%) of patients.
Conclusions:
An analysis of treatment sequences up to the third line revealed that LEP was the most commonly prescribed medication for dysmenorrhea. The median duration of LEP use exceeded five months, suggesting that many patients continued LEP across multiple menstrual cycles and that LEP was well accepted and sustained as a treatment for dysmenorrhea in Japan.
