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Value of cannabidiol for Lennox Gastaut syndrome

By March 5, 2025March 8th, 2025No Comments
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Value of cannabidiol: CBD appears cost-effective and sustainable for LGS patients, with under 34% budget increase

. 2025 Mar 5;23(1):135.

doi: 10.1186/s12916-025-03972-9.

Value of cannabidiol as adjunctive treatment for Lennox Gastaut syndrome: cost-effectiveness and budget impact analysis

Zahra Goudarzi 1, Farhad Lotfi 1 2, Rahil Sadat Shahtaheri 3, Nasrin Moradi 1, Mohsen Taghizadeh 4, Khosro Keshavarz 5 6
Affiliations 

Abstract

Background: Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS) is a severe encephalopathic disease that leads to a decrease in the quality of life, physical injury, psychosocial impairment, and a significant increase in treatment costs. Cannabidiol (CBD) is approved for the adjunctive treatment of tonic-colonic seizures in LGS. This study aimed to determine the cost-effectiveness of CBD compared to the usual treatment in patients with LGS syndrome.

Methods: We developed a lifetime-horizon Markov model to compare the cost-effectiveness of adjunctive CBD versus usual care. Additionally, we performed a budget impact analysis over a 5-year time horizon. The findings were presented as the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) for CEA, with a willingness to pay threshold of $18,261 per QALY gained, and as the difference in the overall budget ($) between the scenarios with and without CBD for budget impact assessment.

Results: In the base case scenario, CBD was cost-effective compared with usual care $6573 per QALY. Sensitivity analyses substantiated these results. From a healthcare perspective, there is a 77% probability that CBD is cost-effective at a willingness to pay of $18,261 per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY). Overall, the market access of CBD was associated to an increased budget of about $3,459,846 (+ 33%) in the next 5 years simulated.

Conclusions: Compared to usual care, CBD seems to be cost-effective in LGS patients and sustainable, with less than 34% overall budget increased in the next 5 years. Future studies need to confirm our results in the real word setting and in other countries.

Keywords: CBD, Cost-effectiveness, Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, Usual care

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval and consent to participate: This study was conducted in accordance with International Declaration of Helsinki. The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, code IR.SUMS.NUMIMG.REC.1403.061. Also considering that this study did not contain patients, there was no need to obtain consent. Consent for publication: Not applicable. Competing interests: None. The authors declare no competing interests.

References

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Value of cannabidiol: CBD appears cost-effective and sustainable for LGS patients, with under 34% budget increase

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