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Background: Inflammatory bowel disease comprising of Crohn�s Disease (CD) and Ulcerative Colitis (UC) are
chronic diseases with a lifelong burden and often need continuous treatment throughout a patient�s life. Data
regarding drug costs in IBD patients are limited. No earlier study has evaluated the drug costs of IBD patients in
Finland. Our objective in this study was to assess the costs of commonly used drugs in IBD patients.
Methods: A structured questionnaire, hospital records and national registers were combined to assess the true
costs of drug purchases by IBD patients. The study sample comprised of 561 patients.
Results: Total annual mean drug costs were 1428 �/patient. CD patients had higher annual costs than UC
patients, 2369� and 902�, respectively. CD patients using immunosuppressants, corticosteroids and biologics
also had higher costs. Patients using biologics had higher costs. Faecal calprotectin had a positive correlation
with costs. Women reported having a worse QoL but had lower total costs.
Conclusions: Drug costs are developing to be a major cost-driver in the total costs of IBD patients.
Discussion: Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBDs) create significant overall treatment costs to a tertiary-level
clinic and eventually to taxpayers. In the present study, the costs generated by the study group were significantly
higher, almost 17-fold, compared with the costs generated by the age-matched and sex-matched control group
during the same period. In this study, all costs are based on true costs collected from registers used to charge the
final payer. These include all direct costs from the study period regarding patients both recently diagnosed with
IBD and those diagnosed earlier. The present study findings of total costs in both UC and CD are consistent with
the data from earlier studies, although there are major differences between these studies.
Biography
Rasmus Rankala is a Doctoral Student, Department of Internal Medicine, Turku University Hospital, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.
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