Chronic hepatitis B costs and healthcare resource utilization in a Japanese patient population: a retrospective cross-sectional analysis.

Introduction: Data on the economic burden of chronic hepatitis B infection in Japan are lacking. This study investigated healthcare resource utilization and costs of chronic hepatitis B infection and liver complications in Japan.

Methods: This non-interventional study used the Medical Data Vision database. For the first analysis, a population with prevalent chronic hepatitis B infection and absence of liver complications was identified and further stratified by nucleos(t)ide analog treatment history. In the second analysis, patients with prevalent chronic hepatitis B infection and incident liver complications were identified. Patients were followed for 1 year in the first analysis and 2 years in the second analysis. Numbers of all-cause outpatient, inpatient, emergency hospitalizations, medication use, and associated costs per person-year were described across patients without/with nucleos(t)ide analog treatment and in those without/with liver complications.

Results: For patients with chronic hepatitis B infection, 75,967 had no liver complications while 17,678 patients had liver complications. All-cause outpatient visits were the largest contributor to healthcare resource utilization and costs, for patients without and with liver complications, and were numerically higher for patients on nucleos(t)ide analog than not. Patients with liver complications had numerically higher all-cause healthcare resource utilization and total costs than patients without complications.

Conclusions: Japan has a high economic burden of chronic hepatitis B infection, particularly in patients with liver complications. Optimizing treatment to prevent complications may reduce this burden.