Prevalence of comorbidities and concomitant medication use in acromegaly: analysis of real-world data from the United States

PURPOSE: Patients receiving treatment for acromegaly often experience significant associated comorbidities for which they are prescribed additional medications. We aimed to determine the real-world prevalence of comorbidities and concomitant medications in patients with acromegaly, and to investigate the association between frequency of comorbidities and number of concomitantly prescribed medications. METHODS: Administrative claims data were obtained from the IBM® MarketScan® database for a cohort of patients with acromegaly, identified by relevant diagnosis codes and acromegaly treatments, and a matched control cohort of patients without acromegaly from January 2010 through April 2020. Comorbidities were identified based on relevant claims and assessed for both cohorts. RESULTS: Overall, 1175 patients with acromegaly and 5875 matched patients without acromegaly were included. Patients with acromegaly had significantly more comorbidities and were prescribed concomitant medications more so than patients without acromegaly. In the acromegaly and control cohorts, respectively, 67.6% and 48.4% of patients had cardiovascular disorders, the most prevalent comorbidities, and 89.0% and 68.3% were prescribed > 3 concomitant medications (p < 0.0001). Hypopituitarism and hypothalamic disorders, sleep apnea, malignant neoplasms and cancer, and arthritis and musculoskeletal disorders were also highly prevalent in the acromegaly cohort. A moderate, positive correlation (Spearman correlation coefficient 0.60) was found between number of comorbidities and number of concomitant medications in the acromegaly cohort. CONCLUSION: Compared with patients without acromegaly, patients with acromegaly have significantly more comorbidities and are prescribed significantly more concomitant medications. Physicians should consider the number and type of ongoing medications for individual patients before prescribing additional acromegaly treatments. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11102-021-01198-5.