Adults with tardive dyskinesia more adherent to deutetrabenazine vs. valbenazine

Key takeaways:

• A greater proportion of patients with tardive dyskinesia were adherent to deutetrabenazine vs. valbenazine.
• Patients with better adherence to either medication required fewer hospital visits.

CHICAGO — Adults with tardive dyskinesia prescribed deutetrabenazine had better adherence and were less likely to discontinue treatment compared with those on valbenazine, although the differences were not statistically significant.

“We wanted to understand the adherence rates for the new [vesicular monoamine transporter type 2] inhibitors, so this is a look at claims data to be able to address that,” Stacy Finkbeiner, PhD, U.S. medical director of movement disorders and psychiatry at Teva Pharmaceuticals, told Healio during a poster presentation at the International Association of Parkinsonism and Related Disorders World Congress.

Researchers aimed to evaluate adherence in patients with tardive dyskinesia prescribed deutetrabenazine and valbenazine, as real-world data regarding patterns of use for the only U.S.-approved drugs to treat the disease are limited.

In a retrospective study, researchers analyzed data from de-identified claims within the Symphony Health Integrated Dataverse between May 2017 and May 2019, and included individuals aged 18 to 65 years with tardive dyskinesia who made at least prescription claim for deutetrabenazine (n = 362; 30.7% men) or valbenazine (n = 224; 40.2% men), with no discontinuation of treatment for 30 days.

Researchers established a baseline period of 6 months before the index date — the date of the first claim — and compared patient demographics, disease and treatment history, and payer type.

Outcomes included mean adherence measured by proportion of days covered for the index treatment, adherence rate and proportion of participants who discontinued treatment, all of which were compared between cohorts during the 6-month follow-up period.

According to results, a greater proportion of deutetrabenazine patients were adherent compared with valbenazine patients (53.3% vs. 50.9%), while mean adherence was also not statistically significant (70.7% vs. 68.5%).

In addition, the proportion of patients who discontinued index treatment during the follow-up period also was not significant between deutetrabenazine and valbenazine groups (5.4% vs. 8% at 1 month; 36.2% vs. 40.6% at 6 months).

Patients who were adherent in the deutetrabenazine group were less likely to have all-cause inpatient hospital admission compared with those who were nonadherent (8.3% vs. 15.4%), as well as less likely to have emergency visits (17.1% vs. 27.2%) or psychiatric-related ER visits (7.8% vs. 18.3%).

Similarly, those who were valbenazine adherent vs. nonadherent were less likely to have an all-cause emergency visit (22.8% vs. 37.3%).

“It’s important to understand adherence rates and how patients are utilizing these products and to understand any differences in patient populations based on product usage,” Finkbeiner noted.