New Drugs Saved Many Cancer Patients In the Last 16 Years
Nearly a million cancer patients in the US prevented facing death from 2000 to 2016, as per the study Published in the Journal of Medical Economics.
The new findings highlight how new drugs targeted the 15 most common cancer types to reduce mortality by 24% per 100,000 people in the States.
‘New study provides evidence that the gains in survival measured in clinical trials are translating into health benefits for cancer patients.’
The study, carried out by scientists at PRECISIONheor and Pfizer, also show that 106 new treatments were approved for colorectal cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, leukemia, melanoma, etc.
These approvals were linked to a significant decreases in deaths. The mortality figure was down by 1,291,769, whilst the following cancers were also reduced significantly:
Lead author Dr Joanna MacEwan, from PRECISIONheor, says: "These findings can help contribute to a better understanding of whether increased spending on cancer drugs are worth the investment. While we do not answer this question directly, our results demonstrate that the result of successful investment--i.e., new cancer therapy approvals--generates significant benefits to patients.
"The efficacy of each treatment is estimated from clinical trial results, but this study provides evidence that the gains in survival measured in clinical trials are translating into health benefits for patients in the real world and confirms previous research that has also shown that new pharmaceutical treatments are associated with improved survival outcomes for patients."
Whilst mortality rates were down across many cancers, estimated deaths were up due to the result of sparse drug approvals during this period: five for thyroid cancer and three for bladder cancer.
Co-author Rebecca Kee states more can still be done.
"There were no approvals in liver or uterine cancer from 2000 to 2016, and few approvals in pancreatic and oral cancer. Seven in 10 of the drug approvals came after 2008, in the latter half of the study time period. Thus, we haven't yet observed the full effect of their introductions in terms of reduced mortality," she added.
The study - funded by Pfizer, used national data sets from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US Mortality Files by the National Center of Health Statistics, Survival, Epidemiology and End Results program (SEER), and United States Cancer Statistics data.
The research team calculated age-adjusted cancer mortality rates per year by the 15 most common tumor types and looked at incident cases of cancer. They translated the change in cancer mortality in the USA from 2000 to 2016 linked ro treatment stocks every year into deaths averted per year from 2000 to 2016.
The treatment stock for each year was calculated as the weighted sum of new indication approvals since 1976 (which is a standard measure in this field of research).
"When interpreting these results, however, one must carefully evaluate whether there are alternative explanations for observed mortality reductions that may be correlated over time with new treatments," Dr MacEwan says.
"Improved screening could partially explain the decline in mortality in some tumor types," Dr MacEwan explained, however.
"For instance, uptake of screening programs for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer remained relatively high at >50% in 2015, all of which have been associated with mortality declines."
The overall numbers understate the effect of new drugs approved between 2000 and 2016 as many drugs were approved later, meaning the majority of mortality reductions are to be realized after the end of the study period.
New treatment interventions were limited to drug interventions and did not account for non-pharmaceutical innovations like robotic surgery, advances in radiotherapy and surgical techniques, which may also affect cancer mortality.
The authors call for future research to evaluate the relationship between drug approvals and cancer mortality post 2016.
Source: Medindia