ArticleLancet regional health. Americas2025
The impact of biosimilar use on healthcare utilization among new users of etanercept for inflammatory arthritis: a population-based regression discontinuity analysis.
Article in Lancet regional health. Americas, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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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.
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
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Abstract
Background: Epidemiological evidence on biosimilars' real-world performance is limited. On July 18th, 2017, a biosimilar health policy was implemented in British Columbia (BC), Canada, mandating all patients initiating a new biologic medication to be prescribed a biosimilar (if/when available). Exploiting a policy change as a natural experiment, we assessed the real-world impact of biosimilar use for inflammatory arthritis (IA) on health resource utilization as a surrogate marker of real-world effectiveness and safety. Methods: Using administrative health data, we identified all incident etanercept users for IA in BC with initiation dates between 2014 and 2020 (n = 3004) [63·6% female; mean (S.D.) age at IA disease diagnosis 52·5 (16·6) years]. Healthcare utilization over three years after initiation was assessed using outcomes including - physician visits (PV), all-cause hospitalizations (ACH), infection-related hospitalizations (IRH), length of hospital stays (LOS), and emergency room visits (ERV). Using regression discontinuity design, we compared healthcare utilization risk in patients initiating etanercept immediately before/after policy-change date, representing the intention-to-treat effect. Additionally, we estimated the complier average causal effect of biosimilar use with instrumental variable (IV) control function method. Findings: Intention-to-treat analyses showed no significant impact of biosimilar policy implementation on PV, HOSP, IRH, LOS, or ERV, with respective adjusted RRs of 0·96 (95% CI: 0·82-1·12), 0·84 (95% CI: 0·49-1·44), 0·91 (95% CI: 0·21-3·86), 0·94 (95% CI: 0·41-2·15), and 0·91 (95% CI: 0·44-1·88). IV analyses indicated biosimilar use in routine settings did not significantly change healthcare utilization, compared to originator etanercept. Interpretation: No significant impact of biosimilar policy or actual biosimilar use on healthcare utilization was observed, suggesting equivalent real-world effectiveness and safety of biosimilars to originators and no unintended consequences of the policy change. Funding: CHIR and NSERC.
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