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A causal inference study: The impact of the combined administration of Donepezil and Memantine on decreasing hospital and emergency department visits of Alzheimer’s disease patients
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia that currently affects over 6.5 million people in the U.S. Currently there is no cure and the existing drug therapies attempt to delay the mental decline and improve cognitive abilities. Two of the most commonly prescribed such drugs are Donepe...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10501598/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37708117 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291362 |
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author | Yaghmaei, Ehsan Pierce, Albert Lu, Hongxia Patel, Yesha M. Ehwerhemuepha, Louis Rezaie, Ahmad Sajjadi, Seyed Ahmad Rakovski, Cyril |
author_facet | Yaghmaei, Ehsan Pierce, Albert Lu, Hongxia Patel, Yesha M. Ehwerhemuepha, Louis Rezaie, Ahmad Sajjadi, Seyed Ahmad Rakovski, Cyril |
author_sort | Yaghmaei, Ehsan |
collection | PubMed |
description | Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia that currently affects over 6.5 million people in the U.S. Currently there is no cure and the existing drug therapies attempt to delay the mental decline and improve cognitive abilities. Two of the most commonly prescribed such drugs are Donepezil and Memantine. We formally tested and confirmed the presence of a beneficial drug-drug interaction of Donepezil and Memantine using a causal inference analysis. We applied doubly robust estimators to one of the largest and high-quality medical databases to estimate the effect of two commonly prescribed Alzheimer’s disease (AD) medications, Donepezil and Memantine, on the average number of hospital or emergency department visits per year among patients diagnosed with AD. Our results show that, compared to the absence of medication scenario, the Memantine monotherapy, and the Donepezil monotherapy, the combined use of Donepezil and Memantine treatment significantly reduces the average number of hospital or emergency department visits per year by 0.078 (13.8%), 0.144 (25.5%), and 0.132 days (23.4%), respectively. The assessed decline in the average number of hospital or emergency department visits per year is consequently associated with a substantial reduction in medical costs. As of 2022, according to the Alzheimer’s Disease Association, there were over 6.5 million individuals aged 65 and older living with AD in the US alone. If patients who are currently on no drug treatment or using either Donepezil or Memantine alone were switched to the combined used of Donepezil and Memantine therapy, the average number of hospital or emergency department visits could decrease by over 613 thousand visits per year. This, in turn, would lead to a remarkable reduction in medical expenses associated with hospitalization of AD patients in the US, totaling over 940 million dollars per year. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10501598 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-105015982023-09-15 A causal inference study: The impact of the combined administration of Donepezil and Memantine on decreasing hospital and emergency department visits of Alzheimer’s disease patients Yaghmaei, Ehsan Pierce, Albert Lu, Hongxia Patel, Yesha M. Ehwerhemuepha, Louis Rezaie, Ahmad Sajjadi, Seyed Ahmad Rakovski, Cyril PLoS One Research Article Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia that currently affects over 6.5 million people in the U.S. Currently there is no cure and the existing drug therapies attempt to delay the mental decline and improve cognitive abilities. Two of the most commonly prescribed such drugs are Donepezil and Memantine. We formally tested and confirmed the presence of a beneficial drug-drug interaction of Donepezil and Memantine using a causal inference analysis. We applied doubly robust estimators to one of the largest and high-quality medical databases to estimate the effect of two commonly prescribed Alzheimer’s disease (AD) medications, Donepezil and Memantine, on the average number of hospital or emergency department visits per year among patients diagnosed with AD. Our results show that, compared to the absence of medication scenario, the Memantine monotherapy, and the Donepezil monotherapy, the combined use of Donepezil and Memantine treatment significantly reduces the average number of hospital or emergency department visits per year by 0.078 (13.8%), 0.144 (25.5%), and 0.132 days (23.4%), respectively. The assessed decline in the average number of hospital or emergency department visits per year is consequently associated with a substantial reduction in medical costs. As of 2022, according to the Alzheimer’s Disease Association, there were over 6.5 million individuals aged 65 and older living with AD in the US alone. If patients who are currently on no drug treatment or using either Donepezil or Memantine alone were switched to the combined used of Donepezil and Memantine therapy, the average number of hospital or emergency department visits could decrease by over 613 thousand visits per year. This, in turn, would lead to a remarkable reduction in medical expenses associated with hospitalization of AD patients in the US, totaling over 940 million dollars per year. Public Library of Science 2023-09-14 /pmc/articles/PMC10501598/ /pubmed/37708117 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291362 Text en © 2023 Yaghmaei et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Yaghmaei, Ehsan Pierce, Albert Lu, Hongxia Patel, Yesha M. Ehwerhemuepha, Louis Rezaie, Ahmad Sajjadi, Seyed Ahmad Rakovski, Cyril A causal inference study: The impact of the combined administration of Donepezil and Memantine on decreasing hospital and emergency department visits of Alzheimer’s disease patients |
title | A causal inference study: The impact of the combined administration of Donepezil and Memantine on decreasing hospital and emergency department visits of Alzheimer’s disease patients |
title_full | A causal inference study: The impact of the combined administration of Donepezil and Memantine on decreasing hospital and emergency department visits of Alzheimer’s disease patients |
title_fullStr | A causal inference study: The impact of the combined administration of Donepezil and Memantine on decreasing hospital and emergency department visits of Alzheimer’s disease patients |
title_full_unstemmed | A causal inference study: The impact of the combined administration of Donepezil and Memantine on decreasing hospital and emergency department visits of Alzheimer’s disease patients |
title_short | A causal inference study: The impact of the combined administration of Donepezil and Memantine on decreasing hospital and emergency department visits of Alzheimer’s disease patients |
title_sort | causal inference study: the impact of the combined administration of donepezil and memantine on decreasing hospital and emergency department visits of alzheimer’s disease patients |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10501598/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37708117 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291362 |
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