The Cost-Effective Price of Lecanemab for Patients with Early Alzheimer’s Disease in Sweden

Xin Xia (), Sandar Aye, Oskar Frisell, Emil Aho, Ron Handels, Yunfei Li, Anders Wimo, Bengt Winblad, Maria Eriksdotter, Tobias Borgh Skillbäck, Silke Kern, Henrik Zetterberg and Linus Jönsson
Additional contact information
Xin Xia: Karolinska Institutet
Sandar Aye: Karolinska Institutet
Oskar Frisell: Karolinska Institutet
Emil Aho: Karolinska Institutet
Ron Handels: Karolinska Institutet
Yunfei Li: Karolinska Institutet
Anders Wimo: Karolinska Institutet
Bengt Winblad: Karolinska Institutet
Maria Eriksdotter: Karolinska University Hospital
Tobias Borgh Skillbäck: Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg
Silke Kern: Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg
Henrik Zetterberg: Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg
Linus Jönsson: Karolinska Institutet

PharmacoEconomics, 2025, vol. 43, issue 10, No 7, 1266 pages

Abstract: Abstract Introduction We sought to estimate the cost-effective price for lecanemab for treating early Alzheimer’s disease in Sweden from the perspective of formal care payers. Methods We developed a Markov model with states defined by disease severity and care setting. The model was populated by integrated clinical and economic data from Swedish registers. We included patients with biomarker-confirmed Alzheimer’s disease and fitted survival models for transitions between model states. Costs in 2023 Swedish kronor (SEK), life-years (LYs), and quality-adjusted LYs (QALYs) over a 10-year time horizon were estimated for standard of care and for lecanemab in addition to standard of care, assuming a maximum treatment duration of 3 years with lecanemab and no treatment effect after treatment stops. We also explored the impact of different assumptions regarding treatment efficacy and duration. Results Treatment with lecanemab over 3 years resulted in 0.13 LYs gained, 0.17 QALYs gained, and a net cost increase of 87,146 SEK (€1 = 11.5 SEK, $US1 = 10.6 SEK) due to administration and monitoring, before considering the cost of drug. The cost-effective price of lecanemab at a willingness-to-pay level of 1 million SEK per QALY was 33,886 SEK per year of treatment. The health gain, net costs, and cost-effective price of lecanemab varied significantly by treatment duration, potential residual effects, and patient characteristics. Conclusions The future price of lecanemab in European countries is unknown. However, treatment with lecanemab is unlikely to be cost effective in Sweden at the levels of current list prices in the USA.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40273-025-01527-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:pharme:v:43:y:2025:i:10:d:10.1007_s40273-025-01527-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40273

DOI: 10.1007/s40273-025-01527-7

Access Statistics for this article

PharmacoEconomics is currently edited by Timothy Wrightson and Christopher I. Carswell

More articles in PharmacoEconomics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().