Eli Lilly & Co. (LLY) Tuesday said a health economic substudy of the TRITON-TIMI 38 clinical trial showed that treatment with Effient or prasugrel, compared with branded clopidogrel, or Plavix, was more cost effective, and in most cases cost saving, among patients with acute coronary syndromes, or ACS, managed with percutaneous coronary intervention, or PCI, including stenting.
According to the company, in the pre-specified analysis of 6,705 patients, treatment with Effient compared with clopidogrel reduced total hospitalization costs over approximately 15 months, not including the cost of study drugs, by $530 per patient.
The analysis also found that, including cost of the active study drugs as well as costs associated with the initial and subsequent hospitalizations, treatment with Effient compared with clopidogrel decreased cumulative medical costs by $221 per patient over the 14.7-month study. Study drug costs used in the analysis were $5.45 per day for Effient and $4.62 per day for clopidogrel.
The analysis also compared Effient to generic clopidogrel at a hypothetical cost of $1 per day.
Commenting on the study results, David Cohen, M.D., M.Sc., director of cardiovascular research, Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute and professor of medicine, University of Missouri-Kansas City, stated, "The hypothetical comparison with generic clopidogrel is important because the patent exclusivity for Plavix will expire in 2011 or 2012."
"Results from this comparison to generic clopidogrel will be useful information for the medical community, especially payers, in the future, and suggest that the overall benefit of Effient was still favorable relative to its higher cost in this setting," Cohen added.
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