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. 2022 Jan 9;15(1):5.
doi: 10.1186/s13104-021-05877-1.

Update on prevalence of diagnosed systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) by major health insurance types in the US in 2016

Yiting Wang  1 , Laura L Hester  2 , Jennifer Lofland  3 , Shawn Rose  4 , Chetan S Karyekar  3 , David M Kern  1 , Margaret Blacketer  1 , Kourtney Davis  1 , Kimberly Shields-Tuttle  4
Affiliations

Update on prevalence of diagnosed systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) by major health insurance types in the US in 2016

Yiting Wang et al. BMC Res Notes. .

Abstract

Objective: To provide current estimates of the number of patients with prevalent systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) by major health insurance types in the US and to describe patient characteristics. Four large US health insurance claims databases were analyzed to represent different types of insurance coverage, including private insurance, Medicaid, and Medicare Supplemental.

Results: Overall unadjusted SLE prevalence per 100,000 persons in the US ranged from 150.1 (private insurance) to 252.9 (Medicare Supplemental insurance). Extrapolating to the US civilian population in 2016, we estimated roughly 345,000 to 404,000 prevalent SLE patients with private/Medicare insurance and 99,000 prevalent SLE patients with Medicaid insurance. Comorbidities, including renal failure/dialysis were commonly observed across multiple organ systems in SLE patients (8.4-21.1%). We estimated a larger number of prevalent SLE cases in the US civilian population than previous reports and observed extensive disease burden based on a 1-year cross-sectional analysis.

Keywords: Epidemiology; Health insurance; Prevalence; Systemic lupus erythematosus.

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Conflict of interest statement

All authors were employees of Janssen Pharmaceutical companies at the time of this study, which was conducted as part of their employment; LLH, CSK, DMK, MB, KD and KS are all current employees of Janssen Pharmaceutical companies; YW is a current employee at Vertex Pharmaceuticals.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Age-, and sex-specific prevalence of SLE in the 4 study databases, 2016. See Additional file 1: Fig. S1 for prevalence proportions under age 65 for MDCR
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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