Cost-effectiveness analysis of statins for the treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients

Abstract

Background: A recent systematic review and meta-analysis reporting on thirteen published cohorts investigating 110,078 patients demonstrated that patients who were administered statins after their COVID-19 diagnosis and hospitalization were had a lower risk of mortality. While these findings are encouraging, given competing COVID-19 treatment approaches, it is unclear if statin use should be prioritized and if its use is a cost-effective treatment options for hospitalized COVID-19 patients. In this study, we report on a cost-effectiveness analysis of statin-containing treatment regimens for hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Methods: A Markov model was used to compare statin use and no statin use among hospitalized COVID-19 patients from a United States healthcare perspective. The cycle length was one week, with a time horizon of 4 weeks. A Monte Carlo microsimulation with 20,000 samples were used. All analyses were conducted using TreeAge Pro Healthcare Version 2021 R1.1. Results: The mean cost for patients receiving statins in addition to usual care was $31,623 (SD $20,331), whereas the mean cost for patients not receiving statins was $33,218 (SD $25,440). The mean effectiveness for the two cohorts were 1.73 (SD 0.96) and 1.71 (SD 1.00), respectively. Conclusions: This analysis demonstrated that treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients with statins was both cheaper and more effective than treatment without statins; statin-containing therapy dominates over non-statin therapy. Statin medications for the treatment of COVID-19 should be further investigated in randomized controlled trials, especially considering its cost-effective nature. Optimistically and pending the results of future randomized trials, statins should be considered for use broadly for the treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients.