Abstract
Purpose :
Vernal keratoconjunctivitis (VKC) is a chronic, severe and sight-threatening allergic inflammatory disease of the ocular surface. To date, most epidemiological studies have been conducted in warm, dry areas where VKC is endemic such as Asia or Africa and have shown that VKC occurs primarily in young children, more commonly in males. There is some limited research from Western Europe, where VKC is less common (3.2/10,000 persons [0.03%]), but no data are available for the United States (US).In order to define and describe the population of VKC pediatric patients in the US, we conducted an analysis of a closed dataset of healthcare claims.
Methods :
This analysis used data from the IQVIA Health Plan Claims Data database (formerly PharMetrics Plus), a closed claims database of more than 70 health plans/payers providing medical and pharmacy data for more than 115 million enrollees, including more than 32 million unique patients with 3 years of continuous enrollment. The study cohort for this analysis included patients <18 years of age with at least one ICD9 or ICD10 code for VKC who were continuously enrolled every month in the analysis period (2012-2015). New VKC patients were identified via a 3-year look-back period for prior diagnosis.
Results :
The mean incidence of VKC was 67 newly diagnosed patients per year, which extrapolated to 2150 (0.29/10,000 persons) for the overall US population. There was a mean of 27 female and 41 male newly diagnosed cases/year, which extrapolated to 847 females (0.24/10,000 persons) and 1303 males (0.35/10,000 persons) in the US. VKC prevalence over the study period was 285 patients (9111 [1.24/10,000 persons] for the US overall).
Conclusions :
This claims-based analysis provides robust estimates of incidence/prevalence in the US that are consistent with prior estimates for Western Europe: a mean annual incidence over the 4-year study period of 0.29/10,000 persons and a prevalence of 1.24/10,000 persons in the US, and confirms a higher incidence in males than in female <18 years of age. However, this analysis also shows that there is a substantial incidence of females in the US. This is a new finding as VKC has to date been described as a disease of young males. More research is needed to further understand and classify the age and gender distribution of this rare and debilitating disease.
This is a 2020 ARVO Annual Meeting abstract.