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3This meta-analysis compares health care resource use costs, adherence, and persistence between groups of patients taking antihypertensives as single-pill combinations (SPCs) vs free-equivalent components (FEC) based on a structured review of published studies. The search yielded 12 retrospective database studies included in analyses. The mean difference in combined total annual allcause and hypertension-related health care costs was $1357 (95% confidence interval [CI], $778-$1935) lower in favor of SPC than FEC groups. Adherence, measured as the mean difference in medication possession ratio, was estimated to be 8% higher for patients naive to prior antihypertensives and 14% higher for nonnaive SPC patients compared with corresponding FEC patients. Persistence in the SPC groups was twice as likely as the FEC groups (pooled risk ratio, 2.1; 95% CI, 1.1-4.1). Improved adherence and persistence may have contributed to the lower costs in the SPC groups via improved clinical outcomes. J Clin Hypertens (Greenwich). 2011;13:898-909. Ó2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Hypertension is a chronic medical condition and recent estimates suggest that 76.4 million US adults 20 years or older have hypertension.1 Total costs (direct plus indirect) for hypertension in the United States were estimated at $73.4 billion in 2009. Pharmaceutical treatment of hypertension can be very successful, with the potential to reduce blood pressure (BP) to recommended levels in almost all patients (<140 ⁄ 90 mm Hg or <130 ⁄ 80 mm Hg for patients with diabetes or chronic kidney disease). However, recent data show that only 50% of patients with hypertension achieved BP control.2 Uncontrolled BP can result in significant morbidity and mortality, with increased risk of adverse cardiovascular (CV), cerebrovascular, and renal outcomes.3-5 Furthermore, uncontrolled BP can result in increased medication costs compared with costs for hypertension patients with appropriately controlled BP. 6Two of the main reasons for a lack of adequate BP control are lack of adherence (missing doses of an antihypertensive medication in the context of ongoing treatment) and lack of persistence (discontinuation of an antihypertensive medication). 7,8 Adherence to antihypertensive therapy is often very low, ranging from 15% to 35%.9 One major factor contributing to decreased adherence and persistence with antihypertensive medications is the complexity of treatment regimens. Many patients with hypertension require !2 medications to provide adequate BP control. Only one third of patients with hypertension require a single medication for BP control, one third require 2 medications, and the remaining one third require !3 medications. 10Strategies to improve adherence and persistence to prescribed antihypertensive medications are likely to improve BP control and thus can potentially have substantial medical and economic benefits. One such strategy is the use of fixed-dose single-pill combination (SPC) medications, which combine !2 active agents in a single pill. SPC medications simpl...

The Osteosarcoma Surveillance Study, an ongoing 15-year surveillance study initiated in 2003, is a postmarketing commitment to the United States (US) Food and Drug Administration to evaluate a potential association between teriparatide, rhPTH(1–34), a recombinant human parathyroid hormone analog (self-injectable medication to treat osteoporosis), and development of osteosarcoma in response to a finding from preclinical (animal) studies. Incident cases of primary osteosarcoma diagnosed in adults (aged ≥40 years) on or after January 1, 2003, are identified through population-based state, regional, and comprehensive cancer center registries in the US. Information on possible prior treatment with teriparatide, on demographics, and on risk factors is ascertained by patient or proxy telephone interview after patient consent. Between June 2004 and September 30, 2011, 1448 cases (diagnosed 2003 to 2009) were identified by participating cancer registries (estimated to be 62% of all adult cases in the US for that time period); 549 patients or proxies were interviewed. Interviewed patients were similar to noninterviewed patients with regard to mean age, sex, race, and geographical distribution and tumor type and site of tumor. Mean age of those interviewed was 61 years, 46% were female, 86% were white, and 77% were alive when the case was reported to the study investigators. Data collected in the study provide descriptive information on a large number of adults with osteosarcoma, an uncommon malignant bone tumor. After 7 years of the study, there were no osteosarcoma patients who had a prior history of teriparatide treatment. Thus, approximately halfway through this 15-year study, the study has not detected a pattern indicative of a causal association between teriparatide treatment and osteosarcoma in humans. © 2012 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.

The relationship between overall survival (OS) and disease progression end points has been demonstrated in colorectal, colon, and non-small cell lung cancers. We assessed the association between OS and time-to-progression (TTP) or progression-free survival (PFS) in metastatic breast cancer (MBC) studies. A literature search retrieved all randomised controlled trials since 1994 in patients with MBC in which OS and either TTP or PFS were reported. Summary data on trial and patient characteristics were abstracted. Study effect sizes were derived as the ratio of median progression (or survival) times, which approximates the hazard ratio. Effects were centred at zero for regression analyses weighted by sample size. Numerous treatments were represented in 67 studies (17 081 patients). Modeling showed a positive association between outcomes for progression and survival (R 2 ¼ 0.30) with a slope of 0.32 (Po0.001) and a non-significant intercept. Thus, a treatment effect on TTP/PFS translated into a concordant effect on OS, but with attenuated effect size. Similar results were found in models of subsets and sensitivity analyses. These results demonstrate that treatment effects on progression end points in MBC trials are expected to result in treatment differences on OS that are smaller yet consistently in the same direction. British Journal of Cancer (2008) Most studies of anticancer agents are designed and powered to show differences between groups on disease progression end points such as response rates, time-to-progression, time-torecurrence or disease-free survival. Although increased survival time is clearly an implicit goal, it is difficult to establish in randomised studies when standard clinical practise is to change treatments at the onset of new progressive events. Especially in the metastatic setting, where expected survival time may be very short, the use of drug combinations or sequential use of multiple drug classes is commonplace. Increasingly, patients in clinical trials are offered alternate treatment upon progression. Consequently, few studies actually demonstrate an unequivocal survival benefit using intent-to-treat analysis approaches.In several tumour types, efforts have been made to justify the use of alternate, more easily established end points by showing how well they are correlated with survival. Several meta-analyses have been published (Table 1) that show a link between time-toprogression (TTP) or progression-free survival (PFS) with overall survival (OS) in metastatic colorectal or non-small cell lung cancer (Johnson et al, 2006) and colon cancer in the adjuvant setting (Sargent et al, 2005). For breast cancer, a moderately strong correlation between 2-year disease-free survival and 5-year overall survival was observed in the adjuvant setting (Ng et al, 2008). A meta-analysis of metastatic breast cancer studies found a positive relationship between objective response and overall survival on an individual patient basis, but the relationship was less clear when treatment regimens were compared...

The addition of lapatinib (Tykerb/Tyverb) to capecitabine (Xeloda) delays disease progression more effectively than capecitabine monotherapy in women with previously treated HER2 þ metastatic breast cancer (MBC). The quality-adjusted time without symptoms of disease or toxicity of treatment (Q-TWiST) method was used to compare treatments. The area under survival curves was partitioned into health states: toxicity (TOX), time without symptoms of disease progression or toxicity (TWiST), and relapse period until death or end of follow-up (REL). Average times spent in each state, weighted by utility, were derived and comparisons of Q-TWiST between groups performed with varying combinations of the utility weights. Utility weights of 0.5 for both TOX and REL, that is, counting 2 days of TOX or REL as 1 day of TWiST, resulted in a 7-week difference in quality-adjusted survival favouring combination therapy (P ¼ 0.0013). The Q-TWiST difference is clinically meaningful and was statistically significant across an entire matrix of possible utility weights. Results were robust in sensitivity analyses. An analysis with utilities based on EQ-5D scores was consistent with the above findings. Combination therapy of lapatinib with capecitabine resulted in greater quality-adjusted survival than capecitabine monotherapy in trastuzumab-refractory MBC patients.