International descriptive study for comparison of treatment patterns in patients with knee osteoarthritis between Korea and Japan using claims data

Abstract

Aim:To compare medication prescriptions for patients with knee osteoarthritis (KOA) in the real world in Korea and Japan.Methods: This retrospective and descriptive population-based study was conducted using claims data provided by Health Insurance Review and Assessment in Korea and JMDC Inc in Japan. We defined individuals as KOA patients if they had an International Classification of Diseases 10 (ICD10) code for gonarthrosis (M17) and were ≥50 years old in 2012. Korean and Japanese patients were matched for age and sex using frequency matching. Patients were observed for 1 year from the first month of the ICD10 code M17 in 2012. We described baseline characteristics including prevalence of comorbidities, and use of medication for KOA during the observational period. Results:The median age was 59 and the percentage of women was 61.4 in both countries (N = 1 133 138 in Korea, N = 10 498 in Japan). The prevalence of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) usage in Japan (74.7%) was significantly higher than that in Korea (59.0%). Analgesics such as acetaminophen and symptomatic slow-acting drugs for OA (SYSADOA) were significantly more frequently used in Korea (25.8%) than in Japan (9.4%). Intra-articular injection (IAI) of corticosteroids or hyaluronic acid was performed more frequently in Japanese patients (57.3%) than Korean patients (30.5%). Conclusions:Medication patterns for KOA in Korea and Japan are described for the first time. Use of NSAIDs and IAI were more common in Japan, while other pain killers and SYSADOA were more commonly prescribed in Korea. K E Y W O R D S epidemiology, osteoarthritis, therapeutics S U PP O RTI N G I N FO R M ATI O N Additional supporting information may be found online in the Supporting Information section. How to cite this article: Sakai R, Cho S-K, Jang EJ, Harigai M, Sung Y-K. International descriptive study for comparison of treatment patterns in patients with knee osteoarthritis between Korea and Japan using claims data. Int J Rheum Dis.

Pain Pharmacotherapy in a Large Cohort of Patients with Osteoarthritis: A Real-World Data Analysis

“…During 2018, nearly two-thirds of our OA patients used analgesics, with oral NSAIDs as the most used pharmacological group, but by a relatively low rate of approximately one-third of the patients. Previous database studies based on data from the years 2013–2017 indicated that treatment practice of analgesics varies among countries [ 18 , 30 ]. Japanese and Korean database studies claimed that NSAIDs were prescribed to about 90 and 82.5% of OA patients, respectively, in a single year [ 18 , 21 ].…”

Unmet Needs in the Osteoarthritis Chronic Moderate to Severe Pain Management in Spain: A Real Word Data Study

“…These treatments are included in different clinical guidelines from Spain [ 13 – 16 ] or other geographical regions [ 17 – 20 ], although long-term use of opioids is only recommended in select patients, as a third-line therapy, with uncertainty about their long-term effectiveness and safety. A study carried out in five European countries has previously shown the high use of these pain treatments [ 28 ] as was also shown in studies carried out in Japan and Korea [ 36 , 38 , 39 ]. One study carried out in Japan [ 36 ] on a medical claims database between 2013 and 2019 showed that although NSAIDs were mostly used in hip (34.1–41.4%) and knee OA (58.3–63.3%), the use of acetaminophens and weak opioids increased from 2013 to 2019.…”

“…Another study done in Japan [ 38 ] found that weak opioids were prescribed to 10.7% of OA patients and that acetaminophen prescriptions increased from 2013 to 2017. A study conducted in Japan and Korea [ 39 ] showed that the use of NSAIDs in OA patients was higher in Japan (74.7%) than in Korea (59.0%), where acetaminophen and symptomatic slow-acting drugs for osteoarthritis (SYSADOA) were more frequently used. In a study carried out by the “Good Life with OA” initiative in Denmark (GLA:D), the percentage of patients receiving acetaminophen, NSAIDs or opioids during the last 3 months was 56% in knee OA and 59% in hip OA at study baseline [ 26 ].…”

Prevalence of Nonsteroidal Antiinflammatory Drugs Prescribed for Osteoarthritis: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis of Observational Studies

“…We conducted a sensitivity analysis to explore heterogeneity related to risk of bias. When studies scored as having a high risk of bias were removed (n = 5 studies) (46–48,67,69), the pooled prescribing estimate remained similar (43.8% [95% CI 36.8, 51.1], n = 46 studies, high quality of evidence I 2 = 5.1%) (11,12,25,26,28–46,49–56,58–61,58–64,65,66,68,70–73) compared to the original estimate with high heterogeneity (43.1% [95% CI 36.3, 50.1], n = 51 studies, I 2 = 99.9%, low quality of evidence). A post hoc sensitivity analysis was conducted to explore the primary analyses using an alternative statistical approach (see Supplementary Figure 1, available on the Arthritis Care & Research website at https://doi.org/10.1002/acr.25157), which resulted in less conservative estimates than our original model.…”

“…Most studies (90.2%) were from high‐income countries with 1 study from an upper‐middle income country (44), and 4 studies were from lower‐middle income countries (37,47,49,57). Half the studies (52.9%) were from clinical settings, with 20 studies from primary care (26,28,29,34,39,42,46,48–50,52,54,55,58,60,64,65–68), 7 studies from tertiary care clinics (37,43,44,47,56,57,72), and 5 studies from multiple care (30,31,41,45,62); 18 studies (35%) provided prevalence data from a database (11,12,25,27,32,33,35,36,38,40,51,53,59,63,69–71,73), and 1 was a population‐based study (61). Characteristics of included studies are shown in Table 1.…”