Pulmonary arterial hypertension associated with interferon therapy: a population-based study

Abstract

Background

Isolated cases of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) with interferon α or β therapy have been reported, but no population-based estimates of the incidence of the disease after interferon exposure are available. The aim of this study was to determine the incidence of PAH after initiation of interferon therapy, using a large commercial insurance database.

Methods

Using National Drug Codes (NDCs) and Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) codes, we utilized the Clinformatics™ Data Mart (CDM) database to identify subjects between 20 and 65 years old who received α or β interferon therapy between April 2001 and December 2012. Patients were followed from one year prior to the first medication claim for interferon to the first diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension using ICD-9-CM codes 416.0 and 416.8, or disenrollment. In those subjects diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension, a prescription for PAH-specific medications was used as a surrogate endpoint.

Results

We identified 20,113 subjects who received interferon therapy during the study period. The median follow-up was 20 months. Pulmonary hypertension occurred in 71 subjects, and PAH-specific medications were prescribed to 7 of these subjects.

Conclusion

Although our analysis showed that the development of PAH is a rare event with interferon therapy, the risk of developing the disease is several fold higher than that for the general population.

Contributors

Ravikanth Papani:

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5384-9150

[phone] , [e-mail]

Alexander G. Duarte: [e-mail]

Yu-li Lin: [e-mail]

Yong-Fang Kuo: [e-mail]

Gulshan Sharma: [e-mail]

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Multidiscip Respir Med

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Multidiscip Respir Med

Title: Multidisciplinary Respiratory Medicine

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Print): 1828-695X

ISSN (Electronic): 2049-6958

Publication date (Electronic): 17 January 2017

Publication date PMC-release: 17 January 2017

Publication date Collection: 2017

Volume: 12

Affiliations

[1 ]Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch, John Sealy Annex 5.140, 301 University Boulevard, Galveston, TX 77555 USA

[2 ]Office of Biostatistics, Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health, University of Texas Medical Branch, 301 University Boulevard, Galveston, TX USA

Article

Publisher ID: 82

DOI: 10.1186/s40248-016-0082-z

PMC ID: 5240202

Copyright statement: © The Author(s). 2017

License:

Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Categories

Subject: Original Research Article

Custom metadata

issue-copyright-statement © The Author(s) 2017