Cost-effectiveness of obeticholic acid for the treatment of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis: An early economic evaluation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Currently, there are no pharmacological options available for the treatment of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). In the 18-month interim analysis of an ongoing randomized, placebo-controlled phase 3 trial (REGENERATE), early results demonstrated that obeticholic acid (OCA) 25 mg significantly improved fibrosis with no worsening of NASH among patients with NASH and fibrosis compared with placebo (PBO). This study aimed to assess the potential cost-effectiveness of OCA compared with PBO in NASH patients. METHODS: A state-transition model was developed to perform a cost-utility analysis comparing two treatment strategies, PBO and OCA 25 mg, from a Canadian public payer perspective. The model time horizon was lifetime with annual cycle lengths. Cost and utility parameters were discounted at 1.5% annually. The efficacy data were obtained from the REGENERATE trial, and costs and utilities were derived from other published literature. Probabilistic and deterministic sensitivity analyses were performed to test the robustness of the model. RESULTS: Treatment with OCA led to reductions of 3.58% in decompensated cirrhosis cases, 3.95% in hepatocellular carcinoma, 7.88% in liver transplant, and 6.01% in liver-related death. However, at an annual price of CAD $36,000, OCA failed to be cost-effective compared with PBO at an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of $815,514 per quality-adjusted life year (QALY). An 88% reduction in drug price to an annual cost of $4,300 would make OCA cost-effective at a willingness-to-pay threshold of $50,000/QALY. CONCLUSIONS: OCA failed to be cost-effective compared with PBO, despite demonstrating clinical benefits due to a high drug cost. A significant price reduction would be needed to make the drug cost-effective.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.022 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".