Evaluation of the healthcare resource use and the related financial costs of managing peanut allergy in the United Kingdom

ABSTRACT

Aims: We aimed to estimate the resource use and associated costs for patients with peanut allergy (PA) compared to matched controls.

Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study using data from the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink and Hospital Episode Statistics. PA patients were matched to two control cohorts: the first (simple-matched) were matched 1:1 on year of birth, general practice, gender and registration year. The second (atopy-matched) were matched on the same characteristics plus presence/absence of an atopic condition. Prescriptions and primary and secondary care contacts were compared between cases and controls.

Results: 15,483 peanut-allergic patients were identified: 13,609 (87.9%) were simple-matched and 9,320 (60.2%) atopy-matched. The total per person annual incremental health-care costs associated with PA were £253 (atopy-matched) and £333 (simple-matched). For those with PA and a prior anaphylaxis incremental costs were £662, for those prescribed an epinephrine autoinjector incremental costs were £392. Extrapolated to the U.K. population, total excess costs of PA were between £33 and 44 million in 2015.

Conclusions: Patients with PA had increased health-care contacts and consequently increased associated costs compared to controls. Observation bias should be considered in interpretation, but this study suggests that PA presents significant burden to health-care systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Peanut
• allergy
• anaphylaxis
• healthcare resource use
• costs

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Amr Radwan, Andrea Vereda & Ben Skeel for their insight and helpful advice.

Declaration of interest

J de Vries is an independent consultant to Aimmune Therapeutics Inc. L Scott, ER Berni and TR Berni are employed by, and CJ Currie is a director of Pharmatelligence, a research consultancy receiving funding from Aimmune Therapeutics Inc. for the submitted work. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was funded by Aimmune Therapeutics Inc.