ORIGINAL ARTICLEHealth Care Utilization and Cost Burden of Herpes Zoster in a Community Population
Section snippets
Source of Data
Olmsted County provides a unique setting for population-based studies by allowing all county residents' medical care to be followed up across all health care systems within the county. All patients have visit-specific records kept within their care facility, and visit-specific diagnostic and procedure codes are warehoused within the Rochester Epidemiology Project (REP) database.14, 15, 16 We searched the REP database for all patients who were residents of Olmsted County and who had a diagnostic
Summary of Study Population
Of the 2131 potential HZ cases among patients 22 years or older identified in the Olmsted County REP database, 462 were excluded from the study, 172 for administrative reasons and 290 for clinical reasons. Administrative reasons were as follows: patients were not residents of Olmsted County at the time of diagnosis (n=137), HZ diagnosis occurred beyond the study window (n=7), condition diagnosed outside Olmsted County with no specifics (n=12), and research refusal (n=16). The reasons for
DISCUSSION
The results of the current study suggest that reliance on claims data may not capture all the HCU and costs associated with PHN and nonpain complications related to HZ. Both Yawn et al2 and Insinga et al10 estimated that 1 million new episodes of HZ occur each year in the United States. However, the mean HZ-related health care cost per case beginning 3 weeks before diagnosis through 90 days after diagnosis was $1112 using medical record data compared with the estimate of $431 reported by
CONCLUSION
Herpes zoster is a common condition, and nearly 20% to 25% of HZ patients experience 1 or more complications, including PHN or other nonpain complications. Any type of complication more than triples the cost of HZ-related care. The medical care cost of treating incident HZ cases in the United States, extrapolated from the results of the current study, is estimated at $1.1 billion annually. Although people with immunocompromising conditions are more likely to have PHN or other nonpain
Acknowledgments
We appreciate the help of Dawn Littlefield, BS, in preparation of the submitted manuscript and Melissa Whipple-Neibauer, MS, for her technical and scientific support.
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Colombian Ocular Infectious Epidemiology Study (COIES): Herpes Zoster Ophthalmicus prevalence and sociodemographic characterization, 2015-2019
2022, International Journal of Infectious DiseasesCitation Excerpt :It is estimated that 10-15% of VZV cases are HZO, affecting one-third of the world's population at some point in their life (Davis and Sheppard, 2019; Liesegang, 2008; Puri et al., 2011; Ragozzino et al., 1982). HZO is considered a public health problem due to the costs associated with the care of complications, the impact on affected individuals’ daily physical and social functioning, and the decrease in productivity at their worksites (Szeto et al., 2017; Yawn et al., 2009). Currently, there are few studies on the prevalence of HZO infection globally, especially in developing countries, that allow the implementation of promotion and prevention strategies.
Costs of herpes zoster complications in older adults: A cohort study of US claims database
2019, VaccineCitation Excerpt :Furthermore, patients in our study were all ≥50 years old, whereas one-third of the patients in the Yawn study were <50 years old. The major reason, however, is likely to be that we included all-cause healthcare costs whereas Yawn and colleagues included only costs considered to be directly attributable to HZ and its complications [8]. The mean incremental unadjusted costs associated with any complication increased with age until the oldest patients aged ≥80 years, for whom unadjusted costs fell somewhat relative to those in the age group 70–79 years.
This work was funded by grants from Merck Research Laboratories, North Wales, PA, and the National Institutes of Health (AR30582).
Drs Itzler, Pellissier, and Saddier are employees of Merck & Co, which has a zoster vaccine that was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Ms Sy was an employee of Merck Research Laboratories at the time this work was completed.