Roche’s Mabthera approved for NHS

Source: Healthcare Digital

Date :31/08/2007 10:11:42

Arthritis drug MabThera has been approved by NICE after a surprise decision by the NHS treatments watchdog.

The recommendation by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) to provide the drug MabThera on the NHS was hailed by arthritis charities.

MabThera, the Roche brand name of the drug rituximab, is a synthetic antibody that targets one of the key immune system cells involved in rheumatoid arthritis.

The drug is already freely available to patients in Scotland after a similar decision by Nice's counterpart, the Scottish Medicines Consortium.

MabThera will be available to NHS patients who fail to improve after first being given an anti-TNF drug.

Low cost

MabThera's relatively low cost is part of the reason for its approval by NICE. At £4,657 to treat one patient for a year the drug is almost half the price of other therapies.

The total cost of the disease in England alone, including health care and indirect costs such as lost working days, has been estimated at up to £1.2 billion a year.

Anti-TNF (tumour necrosis factor) drugs, the most advanced current treatment for severe rheumatoid arthritis, cost around £9,000 a year.

A spokeswoman for the Arthritis Research Campaign, which sponsors research into the disease, said NICE’s decision gave patients who failed to respond to anti-TNF therapy "a lifeline".

An article in the June edition of medical journal The Lancet highlighted the success of MabThera in slowing the progression of rheumatoid arthritis. The study found it reduced symptoms by more than 50 percent for more than a third of patients.

The NICE guidance means doctors in England and Wales can now prescribe it to people with severe rheumatoid arthritis who have not responded to other therapies.

Local health trusts now have three months to ensure all qualifying patients receive MabThera.

NICE's approval comes less than three weeks after the watchdog issued draft guidance rejecting free prescriptions of another new drug for rheumatoid arthritis called Orencia.

August 31 2007