Prescribing patterns and healthcare costs of gout

Abstract

Objective/methods: The Longitudinal Health Insurance Database (LHID) 2010 was used to identify gout cases and their number of gout flares.

Results: Out of 21,376 gout patients, a total of 3561 (16.7%) had frequent gout flares (≥3 gout flares/year). Average all-cause healthcare utilization (35.9 visits vs. 30.7 visits; p < .001) and gout-related utilization (22.7 visits vs. 15.6 visits; p < .001) were higher in frequent gout flare patients than in those with infrequent gout flares. The median gout-related cost (USD $369 vs. $285; p < .001), but not all-cause costs (p = .25), were higher in frequent gout flare patients compared to the infrequent group. Over 55.8% of the flares were treated with colchicine + NSAIDs.

Conclusions: In conclusion, patients with frequent gout flares had higher healthcare utilization and gout-related healthcare costs. Colchicine + NSAIDs are commonly used therapy for gout flare.

Keywords:

• Gout
• prescribing patterns
• costs
• Taiwan

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all authors for the substantial contributions to this paper. Yi-Yun Lee and Li-Na Kuo contributed equally to this work.

Transparency

Declaration of funding

This study was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, R.O.C (MOST 105-2314-B-038-005) and the Wan Fang Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan (104TMU-WFH-09).

Declaration of financial/other relationships

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.