Treatment cost of narcolepsy with cataplexy in Central Europe

Petra Maresova,1 Michal Novotny,2,3 Blanka Klímová,4 Kamil Kuča3,51Department of Economics, Faculty of Informatics and Management, 2Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Hradec Králové, 3Biomedical Research Center, University Hospital Hradec Králové, 4Department of Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Informatics and Management, 5Faculty of Informatics and Management, University of Hradec Králové, Hradec Králové, Czech Republic Background: Narcolepsy is a lifelong, rare neurological sleep disorder characterized by chronic, excessive attacks of daytime sleepiness. This disease is often extremely incapacitating, interfering with every aspect of life, in work and social settings.Objective: The purpose of this study is to specify the treatment costs of patients in the Central Europe (Czech Republic), while the attention is mainly paid to the drugs that were fully or partially covered by public health insurance. Furthermore, concomitant therapy is also evaluated, since it incurs a certain financial burden for patients and their family members. On the basis of the calculated costs, impact on the public budget is evaluated.Patients and methods: This study monitors the direct costs of the drugs for 13 patients, who represent ~1.3% of the total number of diagnosed patients in the Czech Republic, and evaluates the costs associated with their treatment during the period from January 9, 2011 to April 23, 2013.Results: Most of the treatment costs (~80%) were covered by publicly available sources. This finding is also true for the concomitant therapy of comorbidities. Additional payments for the drugs constitute about 20% of the total costs. Keywords: cataplexy, cost, narcolepsy, orphan drug, rare disease, sodium oxybate