Real-world evidence on the economic implications of CGRP inhibitors as preventive treatment of migraine in Denmark

Migraine is a serious condition with large implications for patients. Some patients with severe migraine can receive preventive treatment with CGRP inhibitors, but the economic implications of the treatment from a societal perspective have been unclear.

In this study, we estimate the total societal gain from initiating treatment with CGRP inhibitors in patients with chronic and episodic migraine in Denmark. To do so, we collected novel real-world data on Danish patients with at least four monthly migraine days.

The main conclusions of our study are

• Initiating treatment with CGRP inhibitors in patients with chronic and episodic migraine in Denmark can lead to a total societal gain of 4.4 billion DKK per year.
• The gain is primarily driven by a socioeconomic component of 4,294 million DKK through increased labour supply. The health economic savings make up just 3% of the estimated societal gain.
• The large socioeconomic gains are not directly considered in health technology assessments (HTAs) of the cost-effectiveness of new treatments, which implies that important socioeconomic gains may not be given enough importance in decision making for migraine management.
• Treatment with CGRP inhibitors is restricted to specific clinics in Denmark. This restriction has created a bottleneck, and we estimate that just 23% of patients eligible for treatment in Denmark receive it.

The study is commissioned by Novartis Healthcare A/S.

The economic model is published in a BMC Neurology, see Siersbæk, N., Kilsdal, L., Jervelund, C., Antic, S., & Bendtsen, L. (2023). Real-world evidence on the economic implications of CGRP-mAbs as preventive treatment of migraine. BMC Neurology, 23(1), 1-11.