90% of HCV patients to be treated with triple therapy regimens, finds Decision Resources

Decision Resources, one of the world's leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that, based on clinical profiles provided to them, surveyed clinicians estimate that one year after the launch of Vertex Pharmaceuticals/Johnson & Johnson/Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma's telaprevir and Merck's boceprevir, at least 90 percent of hepatitis C virus (HCV) patients will be treated with triple therapy regimens.

The new Physician & Payer Forum report entitled Hepatitis C: Reimbursement and Uptake of Novel Antivirals Among Payers and Prescribers finds that surveyed physicians expect to treat 71 percent of treatment-naive and 78 percent of nonresponder patients with telaprevir/peg-IFN/ribavirin and 19 percent of treatment-naive and nonresponders with boceprevir/peg-IFN/ribavirin. Similar to clinicians, managed care organizations' (MCO) pharmacy directors are open to reimbursing telaprevir and boceprevir. However, surveyed pharmacy directors do not indicate a clear preference for either one of these protease inhibitors.

"Only 10 percent of the pharmacy directors we surveyed do not expect to add telaprevir or boceprevir to their drug formularies," said Decision Resources Analyst Alexandra Makarova, M.D. Ph.D. "The remaining surveyed pharmacy directors are split regarding the choice of the protease inhibitor for addition to their formularies. Twenty-five percent expect to add both telaprevir and boceprevir, while 15 percent will add only telaprevir and 5 percent will add only boceprevir. Forty percent of pharmacy directors will make their choice based on the relative cost of each agent."

The report also finds that almost half of surveyed clinicians indicate that they will use Roche's Pegasys and Merck's PegIntron interchangeably in combination with an HCV-specific antiviral agent even if this agent was evaluated in clinical trials involving only one of these peg-IFNs. However, one-third of doctors expect to combine a novel HCV-specific antiviral agent only with the peg-IFN that was used with the antiviral agent in clinical trials. These physicians indicate that they will likely use Pegasys in triple therapy regimens as the majority of HCV-specific antiviral agents are being evaluated with Pegasys rather than PegIntron.  

Hepatitis C: Reimbursement and Uptake of Novel Antivirals Among Payers and Prescribers is based on a U.S. survey of 74 gastroenterologists, 26 hepatologists and 20 MCO pharmacy directors. Their responses were compared to assess similarities and differences of opinion regarding clinical, economic and scientific factors.