#ClinicSpeak: DOTS or no DOTS?

Should we trust our patients to take their oral cladribine tablets or should we make them come to the hospital to observe them doing it? #ClinicSpeak

Summary:  This post addresses the issue of adherence to oral cladribine tablets as prescribed. In addition, the post addresses some of the complexities of drug pricing. 

Wikipedia: DOTS (directly observed treatment, short-course), also known as TB-DOTS, is the name given to the tuberculosis control strategy recommended by the World Health Organization. According to WHO, "The most cost-effective way to stop the spread of TB in communities with a high incidence is by curing it.

The imminent UK launch of oral cladribine tablets (Mavenclad), at a list price of £2,047.24 per tablet, stimulated a debate amongst us at Barts-MS about whether, or not, we should trust our patients taking the tablets as prescribed or we should implement DOTS (directly observed treatment, short-course). One position is to trust our patients. Why? Firstly, if we allow them to collect their own prescriptions via a community pharmacy then the NHS does not have to pay VAT on the price (value-added tax). A DOTS programme will cost NHS England 20% more per tablet. Secondly, isn't our relationship with our patients based on trust? If we don't trust them to take their medication then we have failed as educators and as HCPs. The WHO DOTS programme was developed to solve the problem of poor long-term adherence to anti-TB drugs in resource-poor environments, which was selecting for drug-resistant TB strains. I, therefore, don't think we can compare the treatment of MS with the treatment of TB. 


What would happen if one of our patients drops and loses one of the tablets? I am sure Merck would be understanding and provide a replacement tablet. You need to remember that the manufacturing price of a cladribine tablet is unlikely to be very high and hence it would be relatively cheap for Merck to provide a replacement tablet or pack. The price of pharmaceuticals is really very complex and includes intangibles such as intellectual property, the cost of the preclinical R&D, the costs of the clinical development programme, regulatory, marketing, sales, life-cycle management and the whatever else Pharma does (including paying academics to sit on steering committees, participate in advisory boards, give talks, etc.). 


Oral cladribine tablets have many advantages one of which is taking tablets, albeit for only 16-20 days over a 2 year period with the potential for the treatment effect to last years. Why would we then want patients to come to the hospital so that we can directly observe them taking their tablets? One person suggested that patients may be tempted to sell their tablets on eBay to the highest bidder? Do you think the prescribing of oral cladribine tablets will result in a secondary market? I suspect not in the UK, but I may yet be proved wrong. A potential solution to the latter is to use smart tablets, i.e. each tablet is labelled with a RIF (radio frequency identification) tag that is tracked by a wearable device, linked to your phone, to make sure each tablet is taken as prescribed. Or we can simply trust our patients. What do you think? 

CoI: multiple

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