Targeted Therapies Open Door to Improved Outcomes and Lower Costs to Treat HCV
As we were reminded on World Hepatitis Day, early detection is critical to turning the tide of this “silent epidemic” that impacts millions. However, strategies to end the deadly effects of viral hepatitis don’t stop there. Personalized treatment is another essential tool that fuels better outcomes for patients with hepatitis C (HCV) while saving money in the long term for the health care system too.
Paul DeMiglio
The importance of finding effective therapies for HCV is underscored by the reality that the disease often goes undetected, with an estimated 80 percent of Americans with HCV unaware of their status. Many HCV-positive people show mild to no symptoms, making it more likely for the illness to progress and become more expensive to treat as a result.
Although safe and effective vaccines are available for hepatitis A and B, none exist for HCV. To help answer this need, Abbott created the fully automated RealTime HCV Genotype II Test – the first FDA-approved genotyping test in the United States for HCV patients – to facilitate targeted diagnosis and treatment that boosts desired outcomes.
This treatment-defining genotyping test empowers physicians to better pinpoint specific strains of HCV, determine which treatment option is best for the patient, and make more informed recommendations about when it should be administered. Available to individuals with chronic HCV, the test is not meant to act as a means to screen the blood prior to diagnosis.
So how does finding the right HCV treatment save money?
Targeted therapies like these are important for diseases like HCV because they reduce the “trial and error” of having to use additional treatments when the initial ones don’t work, saving money and time for patients and providers. Early detection, combined with follow-up care, can prevent patients from developing later stages of hepatitis that can mean more serious long-term conditions that are harder and more expensive to treat.
Treating HCV patients with end-stage liver disease, for example, is 2.5 times higher than treating those with early stage liver disease. Advanced HCV can also escalate to chronic hepatitis infection, a side effect of this being cirrhosis (scarring of the liver and poor liver function) and liver cancer. Treatment for these two conditions (which can include a liver transplant) can cost more than $30,000. Liver cancer treatment can be more than $62,000 for the first year, while the first-year cost of a liver transplant can be more than $267,000.
As more and more patients find themselves unable to afford treatments, HCV is becoming an increasingly larger financial burden on the health care system.
The annual costs of treating HCV in the United States could be up to $9 billion, and over the course of a lifetime the collective cost associated with treatments for chronic HCV is estimated to total $360 billion.
“As we see patients with more advanced liver disease, we see significantly more costs to the system,” says Dr. Stuart Gordon, author of the Henry Ford Study. “The key, therefore, is to treat and cure the infection early to prevent the consequences of more advanced disease and the associated economic burden.”
Targeted therapies show great promise to improve outcomes while saving time and money by linking patients to the specific treatments they need at earlier points of diagnosis. But what can health systems do to make innovations like the HCV Genotype II Test accessible to more patients and increase the cost-savings benefit on a larger scale?