Objective: To prospectively evaluate the health economic burden of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) in Germany over a 6-month observation period and to identify the predictors of these costs. Study design and methods: Direct and indirect costs were evaluated in 145 patients with PD (mean...

Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness that imposes a considerable burden not only on those who are ill, but also on their families, neighbours and the wider society. Costs associated with treating people with schizophrenia are those derived from the use of a wide range of services provided...

Objective: To quantify direct costs of medication and cost of illness (according to functional capacity) for patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in Germany, allowing further use in a health economic evaluation of sequential therapy with disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) in...

A sample of cost-of-illness (COI) studies was reviewed, which included studies for specific diseases (`specific' studies) as well as those for the entire range of diseases (`general' studies). Theoretically, COI studies may deliver suitable information for health policy and rational healthcare...

The availability of new atypical antipsychotics, such as risperidone, that have higher acquisition costs than conventional treatments has prompted pharmacoeconomic evaluation of their costs and benefits. Risperidone is reported to have superior efficacy to haloperidol and similar efficacy to...

Abstract: We performed a cross-sectional, "bottom-up" observational study of resource consumption and quality of life of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) in the United Kingdom. Three centers participated in the study. Patients received a questionnaire either by mail or during a clinic...

Microbial pathogens in food cause an estimated 6.5-33 million cases of human illness and up to 9,000 deaths in the United States each year. Over 40 different foodborne microbial pathogens, including fungi, viruses, parasites, and bacteria, are believed to cause human illnesses. For six bacterial...

Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) is an autoimmune reaction that can cause acute neuro-muscular paralysis. Of an estimated 2,628 to 9,575 new U.S. cases with GBS annually, 526 to 3,830 are triggered by infection with Campylobacter, the most frequently isolated cause of foodborne diarrhea. Estimated...

Obesity [body mass index (BMI) =30 kg/m2] is common in many parts of the world, especially in the established market economies, formerly socialist economies of Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the Middle Eastern Crescent. Worldwide, as many as 250 million people may be...

Objective: The main objective of this study was to evaluate treatment patterns and to assess the relationship between diabetes mellitus-related vascular complications and the total medical/prescription drug costs in the elderly population using a large, national, self-insured employer database....