Objectives:Antibiotic resistance is the main threat to health all over the world. The consumption of antibiotics is one of the factors causing the emergence of multidrug resistance. The purpose of this study was to recognize the patterns, trends, and changes of consumption in Iran and to compare them with those of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.Methods:The data were collected from a national pharmaceutical wholesale data bank. Defined daily dose (DDD) or DDDs per 1000 inhabitants per day (DID) was calculated as a standard indicator for the consumption over 17 years.Results:Were benchmarked with the consumption of OECD countries. Drug utilization 90% (DU90%) method was used to assess the drug consumption pattern.Findings:The antibiotic consumption jumped up from 33.6 DID to 60 DID from 2000 to 2016. Compared to the average consumption of OECD countries, Iran has consumed antibiotics almost triple times. There were 9–11 chemical substances in the DU90% list during these years. Changes in DU90% list occurred within antibiotics classes during the study period. Although the total consumption growth was equal to 79% during these years, consumption of some pharmacological subgroups such as sulfonamide and aminoglycosides has decreased.Conclusion:Albeit the existence of surveillance system for health-related infectious diseases, the consumption of antibiotics has increased drastically, which illustrates the necessity of comprehensive and effective national antibiotic stewardship.

Background: Iranian government has introduced multiple healthcare system reforms during the last 30 years aiming at improving accessibility and affordability of care. Pharmaceutical products are one of the major sources of financial burden on the healthcare system. The healthcare system and pharmaceutical sector have been balanced out by the partially counteracting effects of the HSEP (Health sector evolution plan) and the imposed sanctions. Methods: This research investigates the healthcare system performance as well as the pharmaceutical market trend mostly based on the financial criteria from 2001. The correlation between the two change patterns was studied to understand the underlying driving market forces. Results: During 2001 to 2013, total health expenditure has grown 25.6% in average. THE (Total health expenditure) share of the GDP remains between 6-7%, while the out of pocket payment has dropped to 37% in 2015 from 57% in 2001, and most health services been directed to the inpatient facilities. Iranian pharmaceutical market has grown rapidly in recent years and grew 28.38% per year and drug consumption per capita reached 34.43$ from 2.28$. However, the import drove most of the market expansion. Noteworthy, the share of pharmaceuticals from THE has also increased. Conclusions: It is concluded that the sanctions and HSEP have enforced partially counteracting forces on the pharmaceutical market to maintain its consistent growing trend.

Objective: Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic disease with various clinical characteristics. The introduction of biological drugs has enhanced the efficacy and increased diversity of treatment options. Considering the patients’ preferences in decision-making about treatment can improve their adherence. A discrete choice experiment is a type of conjoint method that can elicit preferences in more realistic scenarios. This article reviewed discrete choice experiment (DCE) studies to extract which attributes and levels were included in surveys. In addition, we focused on the process of designing surveys and the method that they used. Method: PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, Scopus, Ovid (Medline) and ProQuest were systematically searched in order to find studies that evaluated rheumatoid arthritis patients’ preferences about biological medicines. Studies published in peer-reviewed journals between 1/1/1990 and 12/31/2019 were included. The included studies were analyzed using a narrative synthesis method and descriptive statistics. Results: A total of 7124 studies were initially found. After deleting irrelevant and duplicate studies, 15 studies were included. The most common attributes that were used in surveys were efficacy, adverse effect, route of administration, frequency of administration, and cost. Most studies used a literature review for developing attributes and levels. The median number of included attributes and levels were seven and three, respectively. Eight studies explained their experimental design while seven studies did not. Conditional logit and mixed logit were the most common methods for modeling reciprocally. Conclusion: Several aspects of DCE studies investigating biological drugs in RA were assessed. Explaining the sample size, experimental design, and qualitative work for developing attributes can improve this type of study.

A879 from 90.1% (1L) and 87.5% (2L) APACs could be decoded. Most used drug combinations reported for 1L-treatment were cyclophosphamide monotherapy (8.6%), cycl ophosphamide+dexamethasone+thalidomide (7.7%) and melphalane+prednisone (4.9%); for 2L-treatment, cyclophosphamide monotherapy (9.7%), bortezomibe (6.3%) cyclophosphamide+dexamethasone+thalidomide (5.2%) were the most frequent. ConClusions: The most reported drug was a monotherapy not included in the PCDT recommendations, all other frequent combinations were coherent with the current PCDT. The results found are limited by the uncertainty in data input in the database.