The 5-aminosalicylic acid (5-ASA) agents are first-line drugs for ulcerative colitis (UC). However, intolerance as well as other issues have been reported for these drugs, making it difficult to sustain this treatment; accordingly, the persistence of 5-ASA is an important indicator of UC treatment strategy. We aimed to analyze the persistence of 5-ASA in patients with UC in Japan. This was a 1-year, nationwide, population-based cohort study using the National Database of Health Insurance Claims and Specific Health Checkups of Japan. We identified patients who were assigned UC-related disease codes and newly prescribed 5-ASA between April 2015 and September 2019 and specified the number of days until 5-ASA prescriptions were interrupted during a follow-up of up to 365 days. Among the 137 million patients who were covered by the universal health insurance in Japan during the study period, 68,234 eligible patients were identified. The 5-ASA persistence in these patients were 87.2%, 65.6%, and 56.4% after 30, 180, and 365 days, respectively. The 5-ASA persistence by subtype at 365 days was 54.4%, 56.4%, and 57.6% for time-dependent, pH-dependent, and multi-matrix system types, respectively. The 5-ASA persistence rate after 365 days was 65.0% for those under 20 years of age, 51.0% for those 20-39 years old, 57.5% for those 40-64 years old, and 65.5% for those over 64 years of age. This study revealed the 1-year persistence of newly prescribed 5-ASA in patients with UC newly prescribed 5-ASA in Japan, based on a national claims database of more than 100 million individuals.
Copyright: © 2024 Noda et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.