Modeling the economic value of a Chagas' disease therapeutic vaccine.
The health burden of Chagas' disease (resulting from Trypanosoma cruzi infection) in Latin America (estimated to outweigh that of malaria by 5-fold and affect 2-6 million people in Mexico alone) has motivated development of therapeutic vaccines to prevent infection progression to severe disease. Our economic model for a Chagas' therapeutic vaccine in Mexico suggests that a vaccine would be highly cost-effective and in many cases economically dominant (providing both cost savings and health benefits) throughout a range of protection durations, severe adverse event risk, and dosing regimens and would be most likely to provide a positive return on investment if the vaccine prevented (rather than delayed) the onset of cardiomyopathy.
Public Health Computational and Operations Research, School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. BYL1@pitt.edu
Bruce Y
BY
Lee
Kristina M
KM
Bacon
Angela R
AR
Wateska
Maria Elena
ME
Bottazzi
Eric
E
Dumonteil
Peter J
PJ
Hotez
D014355:Chagas Disease / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006801:Humans; D016233:Immunotherapy, Active / Q000191:economics*; D007843:Latin America