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Joyce F. Liu, MD, MPH
Joyce F. Liu, MD, MPH
Posted: Friday, June 6, 2025
Lives lost accounted for the largest share (91%) of the overall socioeconomic burden of ovarian cancer, with more than 63,000 attributable deaths and 1.3 million years of life lost in 2023, according to a multicountry cost-of-illness study published in JCO Global Oncology. In total, the researchers estimated USD 70 billion in socioeconomic losses due to ovarian cancer in 2023.
“To our knowledge, this is the first multicountry study reporting socioeconomic costs of ovarian cancer at the national level and the first providing an open-source tool that can be updated with new data and to expand the analysis to new countries,” the Brian Hutchinson, MPA, of the Center for Global Noncommunicable Diseases, RTI International, and colleagues wrote.
For this study, researchers used an Excel-based tool to analyze the socioeconomic burden that ovarian cancer imposes on health systems, patients, caregivers, and economies, in 11 countries: Australia, Canada, Colombia, India, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Malaysia, Malawi, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Costs to Patients and Caregivers
The researchers found that ovarian cancer treatment costs totaled over USD 5.2 billion in annual health expenditure across the 11 countries studied. Maintenance therapy, including PARP inhibitors and biologics, represented the largest proportion of expenditures at approximately 70%, followed by primary treatment with surgery and platinum-based chemotherapy (12%). Caregivers spent 17,112 years providing support—an average of 33 days per patient with ovarian cancer—at a cost of USD 471.6 million.
Patients spent an estimated 3,663 years traveling to or receiving treatment annually. Those newly diagnosed (0 to 1 year postdiagnosis) lost about 27 workdays annually to treatment, which was valued at USD 278.2 million. Further, patients lost 2.5 million workdays due to poor health. Approximately 9,403 women were absent from the workforce in 2023 due to ovarian cancer. Labor force dropout contributed 48% of productivity losses, followed by presenteeism (32%), and absenteeism (20%).
Costs by Country
The socioeconomic burden averaged 0.11% of GDP across countries and ranged from 0.21% in high-income countries to 0.03% in low-income countries.
More specifically, the cost per case averaged USD 34,417, and health expenditure due to ovarian cancer ranged from 0.06% of total health spending in the United States to 0.59% in Kazakhstan.
“The share of all health expenditure attributable to maintenance therapy varied widely with an average of approximately 73% in high- and upper-middle-income countries to 42% in low- and lower-middle-income countries,” wrote the authors. Patient time costs attributable to travel also varied by country, representing 11% of all travel costs in high-income countries, 37% in upper-middle-income countries, and 51% in lower-middle-income countries.
The cost of genetic testing was unevenly distributed, accounting for 0.9% of total health expenditures in high-income countries vs less than 0.1% in low- and middle-income countries.
Among the study’s limitations were missing or underestimated costs. The researchers wrote that a more detailed modeling approach, as well as more nationally representative data, could be informative for future research.
