Background Several clinical practice guidelines exist for the management of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection, but the use and overuse of medications and medical tests with insufficient evidence of effectiveness remains substantial. Objective This study aimed to evaluate the medical costs associated with bronchiolitis hospitalizations caused by RSV infection among infants aged < 2 years in Colombia. Methods This was a prevalence-based cost-of-illness multicentric study performed from the societal perspective during 2016–2017. A case was defined as a laboratory-confirmed RSV infection with hospitalization. All costs and use of resources were collected directly from medical invoices and health records. Results This study included 193 patients with a diagnosis of RSV. The average hospital stay duration was 5.55 days. The major contributors to hospitalization costs were room costs (31.5%), drugs (21.8%), and indirect costs (14.9%). Medications with the highest costs were nebulization with a hypertonic solution and systemic antibiotics. In total, 96% of β-lactam antibiotics, 90% of bronchodilators, and 86% of corticosteroids and epinephrine were classified as inappropriate. Conclusion RSV infection in Colombia places a high economic burden on the health system. Generating comprehensive data on healthcare resource use and costs associated with RSV will help to provide valuable information for the development of cost-effectiveness models and to guide RSV-prevention strategies.

Objectives:Differential pricing, based on countries’ purchasing power, is recommended by the World Health Organization to secure affordable medicines. However, in developing countries innovative drugs often have similar or even higher prices than in high-income countries. We evaluated the potential implications of trastuzumab global pricing policies in terms of cost-effectiveness (CE), coverage, and accessibility for patients with breast cancer in Latin America (LA).Methods:A Markov model was designed to estimate life-years (LYs), quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), and costs from a healthcare perspective. To better fit local cancer prognosis, a base case scenario using transition probabilities from clinical trials was complemented with two alternative scenarios with transition probabilities adjusted to reflect breast cancer epidemiology in each country.Results:Incremental discounted benefits ranged from 0.87 to 1.00 LY and 0.51 to 0.60 QALY and incremental CE ratios from USD 42,104 to USD 110,283 per QALY (2012 U.S. dollars), equivalent to 3.6 gross domestic product per capita (GDPPC) per QALY in Uruguay and to 35.5 GDPPC in Bolivia. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis showed 0 percent probability that trastuzumab is CE if the willingness-to-pay threshold is one GDPPC per QALY, and remained so at three GDPPC threshold except for Chile and Uruguay (4.3 percent and 26.6 percent, respectively). Trastuzumab price would need to decrease between 69.6 percent to 94.9 percent to became CE in LA.Conclusions:Although CE in other settings, trastuzumab was not CE in LA. The use of health technology assessment to prioritize resource allocation and support price negotiations is critical to making innovative drugs available and affordable in developing countries.

OBJECTIVE: To identify and summarize randomized clinical trials (RCTs) that assessed the effectiveness of chemoprophylaxis to prevent leprosy in contacts of patients newly diagnosed with the disease. METHODS: All studies were extracted from Medline (PubMed 1966 to November 2008), the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register (number 3 2008), LILACS (1982 to November 2008), and Scirus (November 2008). Manual searches and searches of crossed references of assessed articles were also done. RCTs' risk of bias was assessed according to the methodology proposed by the Cochrane Collaboration. The main outcome measure was diagnosis of leprosy (secondary cases) in contacts of patients with the disease (primary cases). RESULTS: The search identified 320 references, from which 7 RCTs with a total of 66 311 participants were included and evaluated. The combined results from the RCTs favored chemoprophylaxis to placebo with 2-4 years of follow-up (6 RCTs, 66 107 participants, relative risk (RR) 0.59, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.50-0.70, I² = 0 (I² describes percent total variation across studies caused by heterogeneity)). Single-dose rifampicin (21 711 participants, RR 0.43, 95% CI 0.28-0.67, number needed to treat 285), dapsone once or twice weekly for at least 2 years (3 RCTs, 43 137 participants, RR 0.60, 95% CI 0.48-0.76, I² = 0), and acedapsone every 10 weeks for 7 months (2 RCTs, 1 259 participants, RR 0.49, 95% CI 0.33-0.72, I² = 0) were significantly superior to placebo in preventing secondary cases of leprosy. CONCLUSION: Chemoprophylaxis is effective in lowering the incidence of leprosy in contacts of patients diagnosed with the disease.

Many studies have reported reduced tacrolimus dose-adjusted exposure in individuals expressing the CYP3A5*1 allele. A meta-analyses of the current data may help characterize the extent of impact this polymorphism has on tacrolimus pharmacokinetics in adult liver transplant recipients and whether donor or recipient genotype is the most influential factor. Structured searches, of studies that evaluated the association between CYP3A5*1 allele and tacrolimus pharmacokinetics in adult liver transplant recipients, were conducted using Embase and Medline. A meta-analysis comparing tacrolimus daily dose, trough concentrations (C0), and dose-adjusted trough concentrations (C0/dose) across the donor and recipient genotype pairs was conducted using a random effects model. Eight studies, involving a total of 694 adult liver transplant recipients, were included. Dose-adjusted tacrolimus trough concentrations were significantly lower in those in whom the donor or recipient expressed a *1 allele compared with those in whom neither the donor nor recipient expressed this allele at 7 days and 2, 3, 6, and 12 months after transplant [standardized mean differences between expressers and nonexpressers of -1.98, -2.12, -2.39, -3.68, and -3.26 (ng/mL)/(mg·kg·d), respectively]. Results of the meta-analysis demonstrated that, in adult liver transplant patients, CYP3A5 expression in either the donor or recipient resulted in a need for a higher mean tacrolimus daily dose to achieve the target drug exposure. In the immediate posttransplant period, recipient expression of a CYP3A5*1 allele seemed to have the greatest influence on tacrolimus pharmacokinetics with donor expression of a CYP3A5*1 allelle possibly becoming more important with increasing time after transplant.

Background: Recent asthma guidelines, such as the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA), recommend in adult patients as-needed inhaled corticosteroids (ICS)-formoterol as an alternative to maintenance ICS in mild to moderate persistent asthma. The introduction of these recommendations concerns whether using as-needed budesonide-formoterol would be more cost-effective than to maintenance ICS. This study aimed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of as-needed combination low-dose budesonide-formoterol compared to short-acting β2-agonist (SABA) reliever therapy in patients with mild asthma. Methods: A probabilistic Markov model was created to estimate the cost and quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) of patients with mild asthma in Colombia. Total costs and QALYs of low-dose budesonide-formoterol compared to short-acting β2-agonist (SABA) were calculated over a lifetime horizon. Multiple sensitivity analyses were conducted. Cost-effectiveness was evaluated at a willingness-to-pay value of $19,000. Results: The model suggests a potential gain of 0.37 QALYs and per patient per year on as-needed ICS-formoterol and a reduction in the discounted cost per person-year, of as-needed ICS-formoterol to maintenance ICS, of US$40. This position of dominance of as-needed ICS-formoterol negates the need to calculate an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio. In the deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analysis, our base‐case results were robust to variations in all assumptions and parameters. Conclusion: Low-dose budesonide-formoterol as a reliever was cost-effective when added to usual care in patients with mild asthma. Our study provides evidence that should be used by decision-makers to improve clinical practice guidelines and should be replicated to validate their results in other middle-income countries.