Ankylosing Spondylitis | Treatment Algorithms | Claims Data Analysis | US | 2015
Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is a chronic inflammatory disease that primarily affects the spine and axial skeleton, causing pain and greatly impacting quality of life. Diagnosis can be difficult, and left untreated AS can result in structural damage and disability. Of the variety of drug classes used to treat chronic inflammatory conditions, only NSAIDs and TNF-alpha inhibitors have shown any significant efficacy in managing the symptoms of AS, and these drugs dominate the treatment of the disease.
Using national patient-level claims data, this report analyzes physician adherence to the treatment guidelines by exploring the use of key therapies in the newly diagnosed and recently treated AS patient populations. Considering newly diagnosed patients, the report provides a quantitative analysis of treatment patterns and share by line of therapy, as well as progression between lines, duration of treatment on each line, and use of concomitant treatment. With respect to recently treated patients, the report quantifies a drug’s source of business compared with its competitors and details which drugs precede others through an analysis of add-versus-switch patterns. Additional analyses explore persistency and compliance by brand.
