Cost-effectiveness of a hypertension management programme in an elderly population: a Markov model

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Mounting evidence shows that multi-intervention programmes for hypertension treatment are more effective than an isolated pharmacological strategy. Full economic evaluations of hypertension management programmes are scarce and contain methodological limitations. The aim of the study was to evaluate if a hypertension management programme for elderly patients is cost-effective compared to usual care from the perspective of a third-party payer.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We built a cost-effectiveness model using published evidence of effectiveness of a comprehensive hypertension programme vs. usual care for patients 65 years or older at a community hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We explored incremental cost-effectiveness between groups. The model used a life-time framework adopting a third-party payer's perspective. Incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) was calculated in International Dollars per life-year gained. We performed a probabilistic sensitivity analysis (PSA) to explore variable uncertainty.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The ICER for the base-case of the "Hypertension Programme" versus the "Usual care" approach was 1,124 International Dollars per life-year gained. PSA did not significantly influence results. The programme had a probability of 43% of being dominant (more effective and less costly) and, overall, 95% chance of being cost-effective.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Results showed that "Hypertension Programme" had high probabilities of being cost-effective under a wide range of scenarios. This is the first sound cost-effectiveness study to assess a comprehensive hypertension programme versus usual care. This study measures hard outcomes and explores robustness through a probabilistic sensitivity analysis.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The comprehensive hypertension programme had high probabilities of being cost-effective versus usual care. This study supports the idea that similar programmes could be the preferred strategy in countries and within health care systems where hypertension treatment for elderly patients is a standard practice.</p

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead