Patient Characteristics, Treatment Patterns, Healthcare Resource Utilization, and Costs of Targeted Therapy-Eligible Atopic Dermatitis Patients in Taiwan—A Real-World Study

Introduction: The objective of this study was to conduct a retrospective analysis to understand the patient profile, treatment patterns, healthcare resource utilization, and cost of atopic dermatitis (AD) of patients eligible for targeted therapy in Taiwan. Methods: A retrospective, claims-based analysis was undertaken using Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Research Database from 01 January 2014 to 31 December 2017. Patients aged ≥ 2 years and with at least one diagnosis code for AD during 2015 were identified. Patients with comorbid autoimmune diseases were excluded. Enrolled AD patients were categorized using claims-based treatment algorithms by disease severity and their eligibility for targeted therapy treatment. A cohort of targeted therapy-eligible patients was formed, and a matched cohort using patients not eligible for targeted therapy was derived using propensity score matching based on age, gender, and the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI). Treatment patterns, resource utilization, and costs were measured during a 1-year follow-up period. Results: A total of 377,423 patients with AD were identified for this study. Most patients had mild AD (84.5%; n = 318,830) with 11.9% (n = 45,035) having moderate AD, and 3.6% (n = 13,558) having severe AD. Within the 58,593 moderate-to-severe AD patients, 1.5% (n = 897) were included in the targeted therapy-eligible cohort. The matched cohort consisted of 3558 patients. During the 1-year follow-up period, targeted therapy-eligible patients utilized antihistamines (85.5%), topical treatments (80.8%), and systemic anti-inflammatories (91.6%) including systemic corticosteroids (51.4%) and azathioprine (59.1%). During the first year of follow-up, targeted therapy-eligible patients (70.5%; 7.01 [SD = 8.84] visits) had higher resource utilization rates and frequency of AD-related outpatient visits compared with the matched cohort (40.80%; 1.85 [SD = 4.71] visits). Average all-cause direct costs during 1-year follow-up were $2850 (SD = 3629) and $1841 (SD = 6434) for the eligible targeted therapy and matched cohorts, respectively. AD-related costs were 17.7% ($506) of total costs for the targeted therapy eligible cohort and 2.2% ($41) for the matched cohort. Conclusions: AD patients eligible for targeted therapy in Taiwan experienced high resource and economic burden compared with their non-targeted-therapy-eligible counterparts.