Key research takeaway: This study looked at real-world use and cost for on-demand and long-term preventive therapies in patients with hereditary angioedema (HAE) — a rare, genetic immune system disorder that may cause swelling in the face, throat, limbs and abdomen.  

What Prime has to say: “For many patients, long-term prophylaxis can reduce the need for on-demand medication and bring greater predictability to daily life,” said Alina Liang, PharmD, co-author and clinical pharmacist project director for medical pharmacy strategy at Prime Therapeutics (Prime). “However, our research also shows that a number of patients continue to require on-demand treatment after starting prophylaxis. This highlights an opportunity to better tailor case management and drug management approaches to improve patient outcomes while optimizing cost-effective HAE care.” 

“HAE can present with variable disease burden, necessitating individualized consideration of long-term prophylaxis,” said Tim Heuring, PharmD, MHA, M.S., BCPS, co-author and clinical account director at Prime. “Our findings show a substantial proportion of members are initiated immediately on prophylactic therapy with on demand treatment for acute attacks — insights that can inform payer assessment of policy criteria for HAE agents.” 

Further analysis: Using real-world claims data, the study found most people who had previously relied upon on-demand treatment used them less frequently after starting prevention therapy. However, more than one-third saw no improvement or used on-demand treatments more often. 

Implications: These findings show that in the real world, patients respond differently to treatment and that more tailored medication and care management approaches may control costs while helping to ensure effective, patient centric care. 

Prime’s approach: Prime takes a personalized, evidence based approach to hereditary conditions by balancing preventive and on demand therapies through integrated medical and pharmacy management, utilization management and real world data to match treatment intensity to disease severity, patient preference and total cost of care. 

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