Previous Statin Use Common in Patients Who Initiate Inclisiran

Among patients who initiate inclisiran, a majority have received a statin in the preceding 12 months, according to study results presented at the National Lipid Association (NLA) Scientific Sessions 2023, held in Atlanta, Georgia, between June 1 and June 4, 2023.

Researchers sought to assess patient and provider characteristics regarding patients who initiated inclisiran in a real-world setting. The retrospective analysis was conducted in adult patients who initiated inclisiran from Komodo Health, a nationally representative longitudinal database of patients enrolled in a US health care plan.

Participants were adults who received an initial dose of inclisiran from January 2022 to October 2022 and had 12 months of continuous enrollment in a health plan before the index date.

A total of 465 patients were identified from closed claims and 905 from open claims. The mean (SD) age was 67.8 (10.7) years for patients from closed claims and 71.6 (8.7) for those from open claims. A majority of participants were aged 65 years or older (68.4% closed claims; 83.7% open claims), and more than half were women (52.3% closed claims; 57.2% open claims).

Patients were most frequently enrolled in commercial insurance plans (47.3% closed claims, 42.5% open claims), followed by Medicare Advantage for closed claims (42.4%), and Medicare for open claims (38.2%).

Among the cohort, 83.9% of patients in closed claims and 86.3% in open claims had clinical atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease at baseline. Most participants had hypertension (83.7% in closed claims and 79.1% in open claims), and 43.4% in closed and open claims had diabetes. In addition, a little more than half of the patients had received statins before starting inclisiran (56.3% for closed claims and 51.0% for open claims).

Regarding primary specialties of the providers who administered inclisiran, for closed claims, 29.9% were nurse practitioners (NP) or physician assistants (PA) and 16.1% were cardiologists. In open claims, 33.9% were NP/PA, and 22.5% were cardiologists.

Limitations of the study include the use of administrative claims data for nonresearch purposes with limited details on clinical variables and the potential for missing data and coding-related errors. Also, clinical characteristics and medication data were obtained during the 12 months before the initiation period, and the study focused on describing the characteristics of patients who successfully initiated inclisiran.

“Though not observable in the administrative claims database, a large proportion of patients may have been statin intolerant,” wrote the researchers. “No notable difference was observed between patients identified in open vs closed claims based on this descriptive analysis. Additional evidence generation is ongoing to fully characterize the real-world effectiveness of inclisiran beyond the immediate postapproval period in the United States and worldwide.”

Disclosure: This study was conducted by Komodo Health and funded by Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation. Some of the study authors declared affiliations with biotech, pharmaceutical, and/or device companies. Please see the original reference for a full list of authors’ disclosures.