Cost-effectiveness analysis of grass pollen specific immunotherapy in children with allergic rhinitis compared to the standard of care symptomatic treatment in Portugal

Abstract

Background. Cost-effectiveness studies evaluating allergen immunothera-py (AIT) in children are scarce. We aim to compare the cost-effectiveness of subcutaneous (SCIT) and sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) against stan-dard-of-care (SOC) treatment in children with grass pollen allergic rhinitis. Methods. We created a Markov model to compare the three strategies over a 10-year horizon. SOC was the reference to calculate the incremental cost-ef-fectiveness ratio (ICER). Deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analysis were used to assess models’ uncertainty. Results. We obtained an ICER of 12,605€ and 6,318€ for SLIT and SCIT, respectively. In sensitivity analysis, SCIT was more cost-effective than SLIT. Conclusions. AIT is cost-effective in children with grass pollen allergic rhinitis, especially for the subcutaneous route.