50 New Analysis on the Cost-effectiveness of Palivizumab (PVZ) for the Prevention of Severe Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Infection in Canadian Infants Born 29-31 and 32-35 weeks’ Gestational Age (wGA)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background PVZ remains the only licensed intervention to prevent severe RSV infection. The last formal cost-utility analysis (CUA) of its use in Canadian premature infants was published in 2010 (Smart J Med Econ 2010). Since then, the 3-variable International Risk Scoring tool (IRST) has been published (Blanken Pediatr Pulmonol 2018), which can guide prophylaxis for infants born 32-35 wGA at greatest risk of RSV hospitalization (RSVH). Objectives The objective of this study was to incorporate the IRST and non-hospitalized, medically-attended (emergency room/outpatient) RSV infections (MARI) into a CUA for the first time to provide an up-to-date economic evaluation of palivizumab versus no prophylaxis in Canadian 29-31 wGA and 32-35 wGA infants. Design/Methods Infants followed a semi-Markov process, having an RSVH, MARI, or being uninfected/non-medically attended. Hospitalized infants could be admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU; 17.9%) and ICU-admitted infants could die (0.43%). All surviving infants could experience respiratory morbidity up to 18 years, according to RSV infection and PVZ status. The RSVH rate in non-prophylaxed 29-31 wGA and moderate to high (MH) risk 32-35 wGA infants was 5.9% and 6.3%, respectively. PVZ reduced RSVH by 63.3% and 82.2% in 29-31 wGA and 32-35 wGA infants, respectively. PVZ costs (assuming 50 mg: CAN$752; 100 mg: $1,505) were calculated using Canadian birth statistics. The base case assumed all 29-31 wGA infants and MH-risk 32-35 wGA infants received PVZ, inclusion of indirect costs, no vial sharing, and a lifetime time horizon with 1.5% discounting. A cost per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) of ≤$50,000 was considered cost-effective. Results PVZ prophylaxis resulted in a cost/QALY of $29,579 in 29-31 wGA infants and $27,951 in MH-risk 32-35 wGA infants versus no prophylaxis. In deterministic sensitivity analyses (±20% on main variables) the model was most sensitive to utility scores, PVZ cost, non-prophylaxed RSVH rate, and PVZ efficacy. Probabilistic sensitivity analyses (10,000 iterations) resulted in incremental costs of $30,857/QALY, with a 76.0% probability of cost-effectiveness at a $50,000 willingness-to-pay threshold for 29-31 wGA infants, and $28,167/QALY and 79.1% for MH-risk 32-35 wGA infants. Conclusion This new CUA, the first to incorporate the IRST and MARI, found that PVZ is highly cost-effective in Canadian 29-35 wGA infants (vs no prophylaxis) and has implications for prophylaxis policies in Canada. Potential competing interests Xavier Carbonell-Estrany and Bosco Paes have received research funding and/or compensation as advisor/lecturer from AbbVie and AstraZeneca. Jean-Eric Tarride has nothing to disclose. Barry Rodgers-Gray, Ian Keary and John Fullarton employers have received payment from AbbVie and AstraZeneca for work on various projects.
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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 | 0.007 | 0.018 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 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".