Vol.69 No.4 July 2021
Hospital revisits and additional prescriptions in outpatients with influenza after treatment with anti-influenza drugs: Japanese health insurance claims database
1)Shionogi & Co., Ltd., 1-8 Doshomachi 3-chome, Chuo-ku, Osaka, Japan
2)Shionogi Pharmacovigilance Center Co., Ltd.
Abstract
Influenza is, in general, a self-limiting disease, but some patients experience severe complications. Therefore, it is recommended that patients with influenza receive treatment with anti-influenza drugs in the early phase after symptom onset. After anti-influenza drug treatment, the fever resolves and most patients are able to resume normal activities within a week; however, some patients require additional treatment for persistent/recurrent symptoms, such as recurrence of fever, and/or complications such as secondary bacterial infection. However, little is known about the status of additional treatment for such patients in Japan. In this study, the status of additional treatment was investigated using a Japanese health insurance claims database provided by JMDC Inc., for the 10-month period from July 1, 2018, to April 30, 2019. Outpatients prescribed neuraminidase inhibitors (oseltamivir, zanamivir, laninamivir, peramivir), or the cap-dependent endonuclease inhibitor, baloxavir marboxil (BXM), were extracted from the database. For these patients (N=506,448), the proportion that revisited clinics and the proportion that revisited clinics and also received additional prescriptions between Day 4 and Day 8 were calculated for the entire target population and each drug. Propensity score matching adjusted for confounding factors was used in order to compare the proportion of patients revisiting clinics and proportion of patients revisiting clinics and receiving additional prescription between BXM and other drugs, because the characteristics of the patient population differed between the drug groups. Among the patients, 30.9% revisited clinical institutions and 17.6% also received additional prescriptions, and the proportion of patients revisiting clinics and receiving further medication tended to be higher in the less-than-12 years age groups. The proportion of patients who received additional prescriptions for acetaminophen, antibiotics and other anti-influenza drugs were 1.3%, 4.1%, and 0.1%, respectively. The proportion of patients revisiting clinics and receiving additional prescription for BXM did not differ from that of patients revisiting and receiving prescriptions for the other drug classes mentioned above, after propensity score matching.
Key word
influenza, outpatient, medical information data base, baloxavir marboxil, neuraminidase inhibitor
Received
December 2, 2020
Accepted
April 15, 2021
Jpn. J. Chemother. 69 (4): 318-328, 2021
