Author(s):
Costa, João ; Borges, Margarida ; Encarnação, Rosa ; Firmino, Horácio ; Gonçalves-Pereira, M. ; Lindeza, Patrícia ; Sampaio, Filipa ; Santana, Isabel ; Sousa, Rita ; Taipa, Ricardo ; Verdelho, Ana ; Silva-Miguel, Luís
Date: 2021
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/137121
Origin: Repositório Institucional da UNL
Subject(s): Alzheimer Disease; Cause of Death; Cost of Illness; Global Burden of Disease; Portugal; Quality-Adjusted Life Years; Clinical Neurology; Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience; SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being
Description
Funding Information: Financing Support: This work received financial support from Biogen Portugal – Sociedade Farmacêutica Unipessoal Lda.. The funding was not conditional on the nature of the results, which are the sole responsibility of the authors. The study also received scientific support from Sociedade Portuguesa de Neurologia and Grupo de Estudos de Envelhecimento Cerebral e Demência. Publisher Copyright: © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) and Sinapse 2021. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use.
Introduction: Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive, multifactorial neurodegenera-tive brain disorder. Alzheimer’s disease is the main cause of dementia with substan-tial humanistic and economic burden. This study estimated the disease burden and societal costs associated with Alzheimer’s disease in patients aged ≥ 65 years, in mainland Portugal, in 2018. Methods: The burden of disease and cost of illness were estimated using a prev-alence-based approach. Burden of disease was measured in disability-adjusted life years (DALY), estimated as the sum of years of life lost (YLL) due to premature mortality with years lived with disability (YLD). Costs were estimated using a societal perspective and included medical and non-medical direct costs. Results: We estimated 143 334 elderly patients with Alzheimer’s disease in 2018 (7% of the population ≥65 years). In 2018, there were 7538 deaths attributed to Alz-heimer’s disease that resulted in the loss of 76 709 YLL. A total of 45 754 YLD were attributed to Alzheimer’s disease. The overall burden was 122 463 DALY. The estimated direct medical costs attributable to Alzheimer’s disease in 2018 were €219 million (including €166 million for outpatient care, €29 million for inpatient care and €24 million for medication). Non-medical direct costs totalled 1.8 billion (including €1.1 billion attributed to informal care, €551 million for social care, €122 million for sup-port devices, accessories of care and home physical adaptations, and €40 million for transport costs). The total estimated cost amounted to €2 billion in 2018. Conclusion: Alzheimer’s disease has a major socioeconomic impact, being respon-sible for 7% of the total YLL estimated for mainland Portugal. Costs related to informal care represent more than half (54%) of the total costs attributed to Alzheimer´s disease, the latter being equivalent to 1% of the Portuguese gross domestic product.
