Causal effect of conventional anti-dementia drugs on economic burden: an orthogonal double/debiased machine learning approach.

Journal: BMC geriatrics
Published Date: Aug 25, 2025

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) did not introduce a cap on out-of-pocket (OOP) for newly approved Alzheimer's Disease (AD) drugs, such as lecanemab which is covered under Medicare Part B. Therefore, expanding the use of conventional anti-dementia drugs is critical to addressing the growing economic burden of dementia. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the causal relationship between specific conventional anti-dementia drug use and various healthcare costs with the Double/Debiased Machine Learning (DML) approach.

Authors

  • Xiangxiang Jiang
    Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Outcomes Sciences, University of South Carolina College of Pharmacy, Columbia, South Carolina, USA.
  • Gang Lv
    Center for Translational Medicine, Ruijin Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200000, China.
  • Jordan Franklin
    Department of Computer Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA.
  • Minghui Li
    MOE Key Laboratory of Geriatric Diseases and Immunology, School of Biology and Basic Medical Sciences, Suzhou Medical College of Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province 215123, China.
  • Z Kevin Lu
    Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Outcomes Sciences, University of South Carolina College of Pharmacy, Columbia, South Carolina, USA lu32@mailbox.sc.edu.

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