Burden of illness and costs in patients with myasthenia gravis currently receiving treatment in the United States

Introduction/Aims If myasthenia gravis (MG) symptoms are inadequately controlled, patients may experience exacerbations or life‐threatening myasthenic crises. Patients with inadequately controlled MG symptoms tend to be treated with chronic intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) therapy and/or multiple immunosuppressant therapies (ISTs). This study aimed to examine disease burden, healthcare resource utilization, and associated costs in these patients. Methods This was a retrospective observational study using a claims database. Patients with MG were classified into three cohorts based on treatment over a 1‐y follow‐up period: (a) treated with four or more IVIg episodes (chronic IVIg cohort); (b) received two or more non‐steroidal ISTs (NSISTs) sequentially (multiple NSIST cohort); (c) received neither chronic IVIg nor multiple NSISTs (reference cohort). Incidences of crises and exacerbations and annual healthcare costs in each cohort were estimated. Results In total, 3516 patients with MG were included in the analysis. Compared with the reference cohort (n = 2992), the MG crisis rate was approximately twice as high in both the chronic IVIg (n = 324) and multiple NSIST (n = 291) cohorts (p