A research group from Holmusk recently presented a poster at ISPOR 2022 to share new real-world evidence on the association between comorbid substance use disorders and illness severity in people with schizophrenia.

A cohort of 13,634 adults with a diagnosis of schizophrenia was assembled using deidentified EHR-derived data from Holmusk's database. These longitudinal data were then analyzed using NeuroBlu, Holmusk’s flagship data and analytics platform that enables uniquely powerful evidence generation in the behavioral health space.

To measure illness severity, the researchers used the Clinical Global Impression Severity (CGI-S) scale, with severe illness defined as a score of 5 or above within 30 days of receiving a schizophrenia diagnosis. Importantly, 93% of the cohort had a documented CGI-S score to measure disease severity, which enables clinicians to conduct studies that examine outcomes.

The cohort contained different groups of people based on which comorbid substance use disorder they had been diagnosed with. The analysis found that those with comorbid cannabis use disorder were more likely to have more severe illness, while comorbid opioid use disorder was associated with least severe illness.

“These findings, which we were able to generate using real-world data from routine healthcare records, is important in understanding which patients may present with more severe cases of schizophrenia,” said Rashmi Patel, MD, PhD, Holmusk’s Vice President for Medical and Scientific Affairs, who presented the poster. “The examination and analysis of real-world data is critically important to generate insights that help inform our care of patients in clinical practice.”

Other Holmusk contributors and authors to this study include Kelly Chan, MSc; Guruprabha Guruswamy, MS; Sheryl Ker, BSc; Gunjan Batra, MPH; Scott Kollins, PhD; and Miguel Rentería, PhD.

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