ArticleBMC pulmonary medicine2022
Cost-effectiveness of the anti-fibrotics for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in the United States.
Article in BMC pulmonary medicine, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 23 citations in OpenAlex.
- Economic Burden of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis: Updated Evidence on Costs and Resource Use.PharmacoEconomics · 2026Pooled it
- Management of interstitial lung disease in systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases: a survey of rheumatologists and pulmonologists.Rheumatology advances in practice · 2026Article
- Rewiring the scar: translational advances in cardiac fibrosis.The Korean journal of physiology & pharmacology : official journal of the Korean Physiological Society and the Korean Society of Pharmacology · 2025Review
- Pre-Treatment MMP7 Predicts Progressive Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis in Antifibrotic Treated Patients.Respirology (Carlton, Vic.) · 2025Article
- Pulmonary fibrosis: from mechanisms to therapies.Journal of translational medicine · 2025Review
- Cost-effectiveness of novel diagnostic tools for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in the United States.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Effect of Antifibrotic Use on Mortality in Patients with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis.Annals of the American Thoracic Society · 2024Article
- Decoding Molecular Heterogeneity in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis.American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine · 2024Article
- Pirfenidone and Nintedanib in Pulmonary Fibrosis: Lights and Shadows.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Improvement of psoriatic skin lesions following pirfenidone use in patients with fibrotic lung disease.BMJ case reports · 2023Article
- Drug therapies for treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: a systematic review, Bayesian network meta-analysis, and cost-effectiveness analysis.EClinicalMedicine · 2023Article
- The role of pulmonary rehabilitation in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: An overview of systematic reviews.PloS one · 2023Review
- Cost-Effectiveness of Acthar Gel versus Standard of Care for the Treatment of Advanced Symptomatic Sarcoidosis.ClinicoEconomics and outcomes research : CEOR · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe anti-fibrotic medications nintedanib and pirfenidone were approved in the United States for use in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis several years ago. While there is a growing body of evidence surrounding their clinical effectiveness, these medications are quite expensive and no prior cost-effectiveness analysis has been performed in the United States.
methodsA previously published Markov model performed in the United Kingdom was replicated using United States data to project the lifetime costs and health benefits of treating idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis with: (1) symptom management; (2) pirfenidone; or (3) nintedanib. For the cost-effectiveness analysis, strategies were ranked by increasing costs and then checked for dominating treatment strategies. Then an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio was calculated for the dominant therapy.
resultsThe anti-fibrotic medications were found to cost more than $110,000 per year compared to $12,291 annually for symptom management. While pirfenidone was slightly more expensive than nintedanib and provided the same amount of benefit, neither medication was found to be cost-effective in this U.S.-based analysis, with an average cost of $1.6 million to gain one additional quality-adjusted life year over symptom management.
conclusionsThough the anti-fibrotics remain the only effective treatment option for patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and the data surrounding their clinical effectiveness continues to grow, they are not considered cost-effective treatment strategies in the United States due to their high price.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.