Studies from Robert Koch Institute Reveal New Findings on COVID-19 (Statutory health insurance-covered pre-exposure prophylaxis in Germany: changing trends in nationwide tenofovir disoproxil/emtricitabine prescriptions during the COVID-19 …): Coronavirus – COVID-19

Health Policy and Law Daily

2023 NOV 16 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health Policy and Law Daily -- Research findings on COVID-19 are discussed in a new report. According to news originating from Berlin, Germany, by NewsRx editors, the research stated, “In 2019, Germany introduced a law to reimburse high-incidence populations for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), prescribed as tenofovir-disoproxil/emtricitabine (TDF/FTC), via statutory health insurance (SHI). We studied changes in TDF/FTC-prescriptions after the implementation of this law and during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Financial supporters for this research include Robert Koch Institut.

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from Robert Koch Institute: “We performed an interrupted time series analysis with monthly prescriptions per defined time period as the outcome. We considered the introduction of SHI-covered PrEP (09/2019) as an interruption, and four COVID-19 waves and two national lockdowns (2020-2021) as explanatory variables. We extrapolated prescriptions had the lockdowns not occurred, and compared this to the actual prescriptions. We performed sub-analyses based on stratification by five federal states with the highest proportion of PrEP users. We assessed the models’ goodness-of-fit based on the adjusted R-squared using RStudio. The best fitting model included SHI-covered PrEP and the first COVID-19 lockdown (04/2020). The decrease in prescriptions during the first lockdown was significant nationally, and in the five federal states for single-month prescriptions. The first lockdown resulted in reductions of 57.7% (95% prediction interval (PI): 23.0%-92.4%) for single-month prescriptions, while 17.4% (95% PI: 0.28%-34.5%) nationally, and 13.9% (95% PI: -3.67%-31.5%) for 3-month prescriptions.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Introduction of SHI-covered PrEP resulted in a doubling of TDF/FTC-prescriptions nationwide in the first month alone. A drop in prescriptions was most apparent after the first lockdown, and particularly affected PrEP initiations, possibly due to reduced healthcare access and behavioural changes. Ongoing monitoring of TDF/FTC-prescriptions is needed to safeguard access to preventative care such as PrEP and particularly PrEP initiation during public health crises like COVID-19.”

For more information on this research see: Statutory health insurance-covered pre-exposure prophylaxis in Germany: changing trends in nationwide tenofovir disoproxil/emtricitabine prescriptions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Frontiers in Pharmacology, 2023,14. (Frontiers in Pharmacology - http://journal.frontiersin.org/journal/pharmacology). The publisher for Frontiers in Pharmacology is Frontiers Media S.A.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2023.1241310.

Our news editors report that more information may be obtained by contacting Henrieke Prins, Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Robert Koch Institute, Berlin, Germany. Additional authors for this research include Achim Dorre, Daniel Schmidt.