Exploring the Impact of COVID-19 on Migraine-Related Medications Expenditure and Predictors of Economic Burden
Main Article Content
Keywords
COVID-19, Economic burden, medications, Migraine
Abstract
Objective: The aim of the study was to investigate how COVID 19 impacted the spending on medications that are used to relieve migraine. Another aim of this study was to assess the significant predictors which contributed to increasing the economic burden (EB)among patients with migraine. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on patients with migraine between October 2022 and April 2023 using a predeveloped self-administrative questionnaire. All patients who had a migraine, aged 18 and more and can spoke Arabic were included using convenient sampling procedure. The economic burden (EB) model was developed using simple and multiple regression. Results: After removing samples with extreme value, a total of 198 responses were analyzed. When adjusted for confounding patients age, education level, occupation and level of income were the significant predictors for EB. Older patients’ (AOR: 1.82, p<0.05), low educated (AOR: 3.17, p<0.05), employed (AOR: 1.07, p<0.05) and high-income level patients’ (AOR: 2.46, p<0.05) were more likely to experienced EB than their counterparts. Conclusion: The current study provided an initial picture about the economic burden of COVID 19 on the spending of medications and the number of ER visits from the migraineurs’ perspectives. Patients’ age, education level, occupation and level of income were significant predictors of increasing the economic burden on patients with migraine. Most of the migraine patients avoided going to hospital and preferred to take medications at their homes. More research should warrant focusing on estimating the total migraine cost including direct, indirect, and intangible cost.
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