The economic burden of systemic lupus erythematosus in United Arab Emirates

Abstract

Aims

Our study aims to provide an enhanced comprehension of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) burden in United Arab Emirates (UAE), over a five-year period from payer and societal perspective.

Materials and methods

A Markov model was established to simulate the economic consequences of SLE among UAE population. It included four health states: i) the three phenotypes of SLE, representing mild, moderate, and severe states, and ii) death. Clinical parameters were retrieved from previous literature and validated using the Delphi panel—the most common clinical practice within the Emirati healthcare system. We calculated the disease management, transient events, and indirect costs by macro costing. One-way sensitivity analysis was conducted.

Results

The estimated number of SLE patients in our study was 13,359. The number of SLE patients with mild, moderate, and severe phenotypes was 3,914, 8,109, and 1,336, respectively. Disease management costs, including treatment of each phenotype and disease follow-up, were AED 2 billion ($0.89 billion), whereas the costs of transient events (infections, flares, and consequences of SLE-related organ damage) were AED 1 billion ($0.44 billion). The productivity loss costs among adult-employed patients with SLE in the UAE were estimated at AED 7 billion ($3.1 billion). The total SLE cost over five years from payer and societal perspectives is estimated at AED 3 ($1.3 billion) and 10 billion ($4.4 billion), respectively. Additionally, the costs per patient per year from the payer and societal perspectives were AED 45,960 ($20,610) and AED 148,468 ($66,578), respectively.

Conclusion

Our findings demonstrate that the burden of SLE in the UAE is enormous, mainly because of the costly complications and productivity loss. More awareness should be created to limit the progression of SLE and reduce the occurrence of flares, necessitating further economic evaluations of novel treatments that could help reduce the economic consequences of SLE in the UAE.

Keywords:

• Emirates
• SLE
• economic burden
• costs
• consequences

JEL CLASSIFICATION CODES:

• C51
• C5
• C
• H51
• H5
• H

Transparency

Declaration of funding

This study was funded by AstraZeneca, who had no involvement in the study design, analysis, interpretation of results or manuscript writing.

The funding received was used to pay for the submission and the open access publication fees.

Declaration of financial/other relationships

GE was employed by HTA Office, LLC. GE is a speaker for Janssen, Merck, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Roche, Eva pharma and Pfizer. The authors have no other financial relationships to disclose.

The experts did not receive any compensation for their participation in the Delphi panel.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have received an honorarium from JME for their review work but have no other relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Author contributions

GE: conducting the analysis and writing the manuscript. SA, WA, and MF: interpretation of data, and revision of manuscript. AA, SH, NZ, SA, WA, and MF: retrieving data, local clinical practice validation. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge Mariam Elattar for the writing assistance utilized in the production of this manuscript and Neveen Kandil for her efforts in organizing the Delphi panel.

Supplement statement

This article is part of a supplement sponsored by AstraZeneca. All articles within this supplement have been rigorously peer reviewed by experts in the field, as per Journal of Medical Economic’s peer review policy. Any conflicts of interest are stated in the “Declaration of financial/other relationships” section.