Cargando…

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...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Yaghmaei, Ehsan, Pierce, Albert, Lu, Hongxia, Patel, Yesha M., Ehwerhemuepha, Louis, Rezaie, Ahmad, Sajjadi, Seyed Ahmad, Rakovski, Cyril
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
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
_version_ 1785106145202929664
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
work_keys_str_mv AT yaghmaeiehsan acausalinferencestudytheimpactofthecombinedadministrationofdonepezilandmemantineondecreasinghospitalandemergencydepartmentvisitsofalzheimersdiseasepatients
AT piercealbert acausalinferencestudytheimpactofthecombinedadministrationofdonepezilandmemantineondecreasinghospitalandemergencydepartmentvisitsofalzheimersdiseasepatients
AT luhongxia acausalinferencestudytheimpactofthecombinedadministrationofdonepezilandmemantineondecreasinghospitalandemergencydepartmentvisitsofalzheimersdiseasepatients
AT patelyesham acausalinferencestudytheimpactofthecombinedadministrationofdonepezilandmemantineondecreasinghospitalandemergencydepartmentvisitsofalzheimersdiseasepatients
AT ehwerhemuephalouis acausalinferencestudytheimpactofthecombinedadministrationofdonepezilandmemantineondecreasinghospitalandemergencydepartmentvisitsofalzheimersdiseasepatients
AT rezaieahmad acausalinferencestudytheimpactofthecombinedadministrationofdonepezilandmemantineondecreasinghospitalandemergencydepartmentvisitsofalzheimersdiseasepatients
AT sajjadiseyedahmad acausalinferencestudytheimpactofthecombinedadministrationofdonepezilandmemantineondecreasinghospitalandemergencydepartmentvisitsofalzheimersdiseasepatients
AT rakovskicyril acausalinferencestudytheimpactofthecombinedadministrationofdonepezilandmemantineondecreasinghospitalandemergencydepartmentvisitsofalzheimersdiseasepatients
AT yaghmaeiehsan causalinferencestudytheimpactofthecombinedadministrationofdonepezilandmemantineondecreasinghospitalandemergencydepartmentvisitsofalzheimersdiseasepatients
AT piercealbert causalinferencestudytheimpactofthecombinedadministrationofdonepezilandmemantineondecreasinghospitalandemergencydepartmentvisitsofalzheimersdiseasepatients
AT luhongxia causalinferencestudytheimpactofthecombinedadministrationofdonepezilandmemantineondecreasinghospitalandemergencydepartmentvisitsofalzheimersdiseasepatients
AT patelyesham causalinferencestudytheimpactofthecombinedadministrationofdonepezilandmemantineondecreasinghospitalandemergencydepartmentvisitsofalzheimersdiseasepatients
AT ehwerhemuephalouis causalinferencestudytheimpactofthecombinedadministrationofdonepezilandmemantineondecreasinghospitalandemergencydepartmentvisitsofalzheimersdiseasepatients
AT rezaieahmad causalinferencestudytheimpactofthecombinedadministrationofdonepezilandmemantineondecreasinghospitalandemergencydepartmentvisitsofalzheimersdiseasepatients
AT sajjadiseyedahmad causalinferencestudytheimpactofthecombinedadministrationofdonepezilandmemantineondecreasinghospitalandemergencydepartmentvisitsofalzheimersdiseasepatients
AT rakovskicyril causalinferencestudytheimpactofthecombinedadministrationofdonepezilandmemantineondecreasinghospitalandemergencydepartmentvisitsofalzheimersdiseasepatients