Background:
Use of atypical antipsychotics (AA) in combination with an antidepressant is recommendedas an augmentation strategy for patients with depression. However, there is a paucity of datacomparing aripiprazole and other AAs in terms of patient reported outcomes. Therefore, theobjective of this study was to examine the levels of HRQoL and health utility scores inpatients with depression using aripiprazole compared with patients using olanzapine,quetiapine, risperidone and ziprasidone.
Methods:
Data were obtained from the 2009, 2010, and 2011 National Health and Wellness Survey(NHWS), a cross-sectional, internet-based survey that is representative of the adult USpopulation. Only those patients who reported being diagnosed with depression and taking anantidepressant and an atypical antipsychotic for depression were included. Patients taking anatypical antipsychotic for less than 2 months or who reported being diagnosed with bipolardisorder or schizophrenia were excluded. Patients taking aripiprazole were compared withpatients taking other atypical antipsychotics. Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) andhealth utilities were assessed using the Short Form 12-item (SF-12) health survey.Differences between groups were analyzed using General Linear Models (GLM) controllingfor demographic and health characteristics.
Results:
Overall sample size was 426 with 59.9% taking aripiprazole (n = 255) and 40.1% (n = 171)taking another atypical antipsychotic (olanzapine (n = 19), quetiapine (n = 127), risperidone(n = 14) or ziprasidone (n = 11)). Of the SF-12 domains, mean mental component summary(MCS) score (p = .018), bodily pain (p = .047), general health (p = .009) and emotional rolelimitations (p = .009) were found to be significantly higher in aripiprazole users indicatingbetter HRQoL compared to other atypical antipsychotics. After controlling for demographicand health characteristics, patients taking aripiprazole reported significantly higher meanmental SF-12 component summary (34.10 vs. 31.43, p = .018), bodily pain (55.19 vs. 49.05,p = .047), general health (50.05 vs. 43.07, p = .009), emotional role limitations (49.44 vs.41.83, p = .009), and SF-6D utility scores (0.59 vs. 0.56, p = .042).
Conclusions:
Comparison of patients taking aripiprazole with a cohort of patients using another AA fordepression demonstrated that aripiprazole was independently associated with better (bothstatistically and clinically) HRQoL and health utilities.