Background: Because of insufficient data about their benefit-risk ratio in real life, drugs used for Alzheimer's disease (AD; cholinesterase inhibitors and memantine) were withdrawn from the list of reimbursable drugs in France on 1 August 2018.
Objectives: In this context, this study aimed to investigate the effects of the removal of AD drugs from the list of reimbursed drugs among patients followed in memory centres in France, in terms of prevalence and factors associated with drug discontinuation and evolution of disease management and cognition after drug discontinuation.
Methods: This is an observational study based on data from the National Alzheimer Data Bank ('Banque Nationale Alzheimer' [BNA]), which centralizes information about patients consulting in memory centres. The drug discontinuation rate was estimated among patients receiving AD drugs at the last visit before the end of reimbursement. Factors associated with drug discontinuation were investigated among sociodemographic and disease characteristics, as well as among the use of healthcare resources before the end of reimbursement. We compared the evolution of disease management (psychotropic drugs and non-pharmacological interventions) and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score during the year following the end of reimbursement among patients with a diagnosis of AD.
Results: Among the 19,380 patients of the study sample (62.5% females, mean age 81 years, 86.8% with a diagnosis of AD), 19.5% discontinued their treatment after the end of reimbursement. The main factors associated with drug discontinuation were the type of dementia and lower MMSE level. Compared with patients with a diagnosis of AD, those with vascular dementia were more likely to stop their treatment, whereas those with dementia with Lewy bodies were less likely to discontinue. Among patients with a diagnosis of AD, drug discontinuation was associated with increased use of psychotropic medications, especially antidepressants, and non-pharmacological interventions afterwards, but there was no difference regarding the evolution of MMSE score.
Conclusion: This study provides real-life information about the use of AD drugs after they were withdrawn from reimbursement in France and shows that drug discontinuation was limited among patients followed in memory centres and accompanied by increased use of other healthcare resources.