Genetic risk for atrial fibrillation could motivate patient adherence to warfarin therapy: a cost effectiveness analysis

BMC Cardiovascular Disorders

Research Article

Andre R. Arellano¹  Lance A. Bare¹  James J. Devlin¹  Dov Shiffman¹  Judy Z. Louie¹  Marco V. Perez² 

[1] Quest Diagnostics, 1401 Harbor Bay Parkway, 94502, Alameda, CA, USA;Stanford University School of Medicine, 291 Campus Drive, 94305, Stanford, CA, USA;

关键词: 4q25 genetic test;    Adherence;    Cost effectiveness;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12872-015-0100-7

 received in 2015-02-19, accepted in 2015-09-18,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundAtrial fibrillation (AF) increases risk of stroke, and although this stroke risk can be ameliorated by warfarin therapy, some patients decline to adhere to warfarin therapy. A prospective clinical study could be conducted to determine whether knowledge of genetic risk for AF could increase adherence to warfarin therapy for patients who initially declined therapy. As a prelude to a potential prospective clinical study, we investigated whether the use of genetic information to increase adherence could be cost effective.MethodsMarkov model assessed costs and utilities of two care strategies for AF patients who declined warfarin therapy. In the usual care strategy patients received aspirin. In the test strategy genetic risk for AF was assessed (genotype of the 4q25 locus) and some patients with a positive genetic test (≥1 risk allele) were assumed to adhere to warfarin therapy. The remaining patients received aspirin. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) was the ratio of the costs differential and the quality adjusted life-years (QALYs) differential for the two strategies.ResultsWe found that the 4q25 genetic testing strategy, compared with the usual care strategy (aspirin therapy), would be cost-effective (ICER $ 47,148) if 2.1 % or more of the test positive patients were to adhere to warfarin therapy. The test strategy would become a cost saving strategy if 5.3 % or more of the test positive patients were to adhere to warfarin therapy. If 20 % of test positive patients were to adhere to warfarin therapy in a hypothetical cohort of 1000 patients, 7 stroke events would be prevented and 3 extra-cranial major bleeding events would be caused over 5 years, resulting in a cost savings of ~ $250,000 and a net gain of 9 QALYs.DiscussionA clinical study to assess the impact of patient knowledge of genetic risk of AF on adherence to warfarin therapy would be merited because even a modest increase in patient adherence would make a genetic testing strategy cost-effective.ConclusionProviding patients who declined warfarin therapy with information about their genetic risk of AF would be cost effective if this genetic risk information resulted in modest increases in adherence.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Shiffman et al. 2015