Authors: Hirotaka Katada Naoichiro Yukawa Hisashi Urushihara Shiro Tanaka Tsuneyo Mimori Koji Kawakami
Publish Date: 2014/01/14
Volume: 34, Issue: 5, Pages: 949-956
Abstract
This drug utilization study aimed to investigate prescription patterns and trends for antirheumatic drug use in Japanese patients with rheumatoid arthritis RA clarifying if patients with RA in Japan are being treated according to EULAR recommendations and ACR guidelines We used a largescale claims database consisting of the medical claims of employee health insurance recipients which included approximately one million insured people The claims data for incident 5126 patients with diagnosis codes of RA between January 1 2005 and October 31 2011 were analyzed The number of patients who received disease modifying antirheumatic drugs DMARDs including biologics as initial therapy was 629 123 while the others received nonDMARD therapy only During the study period use of methotrexate MTX and biologics as firstline drugs increased from 19 to 80 and from 0 to 16 respectively p 0001 for both while that of nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs NSAIDs decreased p = 0004 Time from first RA diagnosis to the start of treatment with DMARDs decreased significantly from 2005 to 2010 These findings suggest that many early RA patients in Japan do not yet receive aggressive treatment albeit that this prescribing practice has gradually changed to better comply with clinical recommendations The current obsolete Japanese RA guidelines require urgent updating to reflect the most recent knowledge and care with effective treatment modalitiesKK received paid consultancy from Canon Inc Olympus Co Kyowa Hakko Kirin Co Ltd Kaken Pharmaceutical Co Ltd Novartis KK Otsuka Pharmaceuticals Co Ltd TM received grants from Eisai Co Ltd BristolMyers Squibb KK Chugai Pharmaceutical Co Ltd Asahi Kasei Pharma Co Astellas Pharma Inc HU received paid consultancy from Eli Lilly Japan The other authors declare no conflict of interest
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