UCI-Led Research Team Finds Letermovir to be a Cost Effective Treatment for Cytomegalovirus Prophylaxis

In a UCI-led study published in PharmacoEconomics Open researchers found that, in general, using letermovir (an antiviral medication to prevent a disease known as cytomegalovirus) was a cost-effective option compared to traditional standard of care in a population of allogeneic stem cell transplant recipients.

Cytomegalovirus is a common virus. Once infected, the body retains the virus for life. Most people don’t know they have cytomegalovirus because it rarely causes problems in healthy people. For people who have weakened immune systems, for example, people who have had an organ, stem cell or bone marrow transplant, cytomegalovirus can be fatal.

Cytomegalovirus spreads from person to person through body fluids, such as blood, saliva, urine, semen, and breast milk. While there is no cure, there are medications that can help treat symptoms.

Letermovir entered the US market in 2017, and since then has gained widespread popularity for its demonstrated effectiveness in preventing the negative effects of cytomegalovirus infection including fatigue, fever, sore throat, and muscle aches.

However, historically, letermovir was found to be significantly more expensive than standard of care.

The research team tested different scenarios and with the exception of a few cases, letermovir was found to be a more cost-effective treatment.

“Our findings can be used by key decision makers in analyses to determine whether adding letermovir to formulary is ‘worth the squeeze’, so to speak,” says lead researcher, Aryana Sepassi, assistant professor of clinical pharmacy at the UCI School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences. “Previous cost-effectiveness analyses of letermovir were limited by data that was available at the time – we performed an analysis using more up-to-date data from a variety of different sources, and still demonstrated cost-effectiveness.”

As more data are published on letermovir, the researchers hope to have a better overall picture of its success in the clinical setting and to be able to re-perform a cost-effectiveness analysis.

“Patients who receive an allogeneic stem cell transplant for cancer are very vulnerable patients who are at risk for a variety of different adverse conditions. It’s important for healthcare providers to be able to evaluate analyses such as these to aid in decision making for these patients: to decide whether the value of letermovir is worth the trade-off in cost,” says Sepassi.