Inflammatory, Osteoarthritis Cause Substantial Loss in Productivity

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Inflammatory arthritis (IA) and osteoarthritis (OA) cause a substantial loss in productivity during the year before and after diagnosis. IA treatment seems to improve productivity.¹

“Work disability can manifest as reduced productivity at work (presenteeism), absence from work (absenteeism), and, eventually, temporary or permanent work cessation (unemployment or early retirement). With the rising life expectancy and retirement age worldwide, IA and OA often affect individuals who are in the economically productive period of their lives and impose substantial burdens on affected individuals, their caregivers, and society,” lead investigator Ling Xiang, Department of Rheumatology and Immunology, Singapore General Hospital, and Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, and colleagues wrote.¹

Xiang and colleagues collected employment status, monthly income, days absent from work, and presenteeism from 102 patients with IA (48 with rheumatoid arthritis [RA], 19 with spondyloarthritis [SpA], 23 with psoriatic arthritis [PsA], and 12 with seronegative IA) and 64 patients with OA (44 with OA hands, 18 with OA knees, and 2 with OA hands and knees). They collected this data at diagnosis and at 1 year post-diagnosis and used it to estimate the annual costs of unemployment, absenteeism, and presenteeism using ahuman capital approach. Non-parametric bootstrapping was performed to account for the uncertainty of the estimated costs.¹

Patients with IA had a mean age of 52.3 years and patients with OA had a mean age of 59.5 years. Patients with IA also had a greater proportion of treatment (99.0%) compared with those with OA (67.2%) and a greater decrease in presenteeism (median, 15% vs 10%). Patients with IA had lower annual costs of absenteeism and presenteeism than those with OS both in the year before (USD $566 vs. $733 and $8,472 vs. $10,684, respectively) and after diagnosis ($636 vs. $1,035 and $6,866 vs. $9,362, respectively).¹

“Existing studies on the cost of IA and OA are often cross-sectional and/or involve patients with various disease durations, thus not providing a comprehensive perspective on the cost of illness from the time of diagnosis. In this study, we therefore assessed the cost of lost productivity in an inception cohort of patients with IA and OA in the year before and after diagnosis,” Xiang and colleagues wrote.¹

Other recent research into PsA and productivity found that Guselkumab treatment displayed improvements in impairment of work productivity and nonwork daily activity, as well as in general health status, over 2 years in patients with active PsA.²

Upon analysis, those randomized to guselkumab exhibited significantly better improvement in work productivity and nonwork daily activity impairment, compared with placebo, through week 24 in both Q4W and Q8W treatment regimens. These improvements were maintained through week 52.

Among both guselkumab cohorts, the least-squares mean improvements were observed in work productivity impairment (Q4W, –23.8%; Q8W, –28.0%) and nonwork daily activity impairment (Q4W, –29.2%; Q8W, –28.0%).²

Those randomized to guselkumab also had greater least-squares mean improvements compared with placebo in both the EQ-5D-5L Index and EQ-VAS scores at week 16 and improved further at week 24. The least-squares mean changes from baseline in both scores in the guselkumab groups were maintained through week 100 (EQ-5D-5L: 0.15 in both groups; EQ-VAS: Q4W, 25.0; Q8W, 24.6).²

REFERENCES

1. Xiang L, Graves N, Low AHL, et al. Cost of lost productivity in inflammatory arthritis and osteoarthritis in the year before and after diagnosis: An inception cohort study. Int J Rheum Dis. 2024;27(7):e15252. doi:10.1111/1756-185X.15252
2. Curtis, J.R., McInnes, I.B., Rahman, P. et al. Work Productivity and General Health Through 2 Years of Guselkumab Treatment in a Phase 3 Randomized Trial of Patients With Active Psoriatic Arthritis. Rheumatol Ther (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40744-024-00642-9