title: Concomitant asthma medication use by patients receiving omalizumab 2003-2008.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To examine patterns of omalizumab use in the first 5 years of its availability.
  
  
  METHODS
  Our study comprised a series of descriptive retrospective cohort analyses using healthcare claims data. The study population comprised patients of any age who had omalizumab claims in the 5 years after 1 July 2003, and we created five 1-year cohorts from this population. Each cohort included patients continuously enrolled for at least 12 months with ≥2 omalizumab claims during the year. Cohorts contained between 302 and 1382 unique omalizumab users, and over 99% of patients with an omalizumab claim had at least one asthma diagnosis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In all years, the specialty most commonly seen in conjunction with the initial omalizumab prescription was allergy/immunology. In all years, omalizumab was used in conjunction with three or more additional classes of asthma medications at least 70% of the time and with five or more classes at least 33% of the time; the proportion of patients filling omalizumab prescriptions who had no other concomitant classes of asthma medications varied from 4% to 8%. The most common pattern of asthma medication treatment in all years was omalizumab with combination steroids/long-acting beta-agonist inhaler, a leukotriene receptor antagonist, a short-acting beta-agonist inhaler, and at least one course of oral corticosteroids.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In this study of a large sample of commercial health insurance claims covering the first 5 years after approval of omalizumab, we found that omalizumab was infrequently used as a single agent or without concomitant inhaled corticosteroids, and most omalizumab prescriptions came from specialist physicians.
authors.affiliation: Partnership for Health Analytic Research, Beverly Hills, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Michael S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Broder
authors.forename: James L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Zazzali
authors.forename: Eunice
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: Ashley
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Yegin
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D018927:Anti-Asthmatic Agents / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D000888:Antibodies, Anti-Idiotypic / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D061067:Antibodies, Monoclonal, Humanized / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D001249:Asthma / Q000188:drug therapy*; D011307:Drug Prescriptions / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D004359:Drug Therapy, Combination; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007345:Insurance Claim Review; D007356:Insurance, Pharmaceutical Services; D008297:Male; D008511:Medicine / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D000069444:Omalizumab
chemical_list: D018927:Anti-Asthmatic Agents; D000888:Antibodies, Anti-Idiotypic; D061067:Antibodies, Monoclonal, Humanized; D000069444:Omalizumab