Baliunas Dolly, Gartner Coral, Hollingworth Samantha A, Sullivan Clair, Comans Tracy, Pole Jason D
School of Public Health, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
Dalla Lana School of Public Health, The University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
Drug Alcohol Rev. 2023 Jan;42(1):225-232. doi: 10.1111/dar.13557. Epub 2022 Sep 29.
In Australia, the available published literature demonstrated a spike in dispensed prescription medicines after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that subsequently returned to expected levels. Smoking cessation medicines may not follow this pattern because quit attempts are influenced by a range of factors. Knowledge of whether dispensing of these medicines has changed since the pandemic is lacking. We explored the change in dispensing of publicly subsidised smoking cessation medicines since the pandemic.
Australia's universal health-care system provides access to government-subsidised medicines via the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and records of dispensed medicines are publicly available on a nationally aggregated level. We retrieved Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme data from January 2016 to January 2021. We used interrupted time series modelling to quantify the impact of COVID-19 on dispensing of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) patches, varenicline and all smoking cessation treatments combined separately.
After an initial spike in medicines at the onset of the pandemic, the monthly rate of prescriptions dispensed for varenicline was predominantly within predicted ranges, while that of NRT patches was predominantly below predicted ranges.
There has been a differential change in the number of subsidised smoking cessation medicines supplied in Australia since the COVID-19 pandemic, with varenicline prescriptions largely within, and NRT patches largely lower than, expected ranges. The reasons for the apparent change in dispensing of subsidised smoking cessation medicines are unclear.
在澳大利亚，已发表的文献表明，新冠疫情爆发后，已配药的处方药数量出现激增，随后又回到预期水平。戒烟药物可能并不遵循这一模式，因为戒烟尝试受到一系列因素的影响。目前尚不清楚自疫情以来这些药物的配药情况是否发生了变化。我们探讨了自疫情以来公共补贴戒烟药物配药情况的变化。
澳大利亚的全民医疗保健系统通过药品福利计划提供政府补贴的药物，并且已配药记录在全国汇总层面是公开可用的。我们检索了2016年1月至2021年1月的药品福利计划数据。我们使用中断时间序列模型分别量化新冠疫情对尼古丁替代疗法（NRT）贴片、伐尼克兰以及所有戒烟治疗药物配药情况的影响。
在疫情爆发初期药物出现最初的激增之后，伐尼克兰的每月处方配药量主要在预测范围内，而NRT贴片的配药量主要低于预测范围。
自新冠疫情以来，澳大利亚提供的补贴戒烟药物数量出现了差异变化，伐尼克兰处方量基本在预期范围内，而NRT贴片的处方量大多低于预期范围。补贴戒烟药物配药情况出现明显变化的原因尚不清楚。
