OBJECTIVES: Rheumatoid arthritis affects approximately 1% of the world’s population. In the United States, an estimated 1.5 million adults live with RA. Due to the high prevalence of comorbidities among patients with RA and the high costs of biologic therapies, the economic burden of the disease has become increasingly important. Researchers have recognized that treatment strategy should focus on both disease progression and comorbidity management. The purpose of our study is to determine the cost-effectiveness of using adjunctive statin therapy in combination with one or more biologic, versus biologic alone, in patients with RA.METHODS: We first conducted analysis RA patients participating in the National Data Bank for Rheumatic Diseases (NDB) from 2003 through 2013 to identify study subjects and parameters used for further decision analysis. Second, a Markov simulation model with five-health state (low, mild, moderate, severe, and death defined by Health Assessments Questioner score) was developed to estimate quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and costs associated with adding statin treatment to patients RA over 10 years. We evaluated strategies based on different adjunctive statin therapy to biologic (atorvastatin, rosuvastatin, simvastatin, lovastatin, fluvastatin, pravastatin,) compared to biologic alone. Transition probabilities and effectiveness measures (HAQ score improvements) were estimated from the NDB. Direct and indirect costs (2009 US dollars) were obtained from the literature. Both costs and effectiveness are discounted by 3% annually.RESULTS: Our findings indicate that the clinical benefits of adjunctive statin therapy in treating RA disease progression resulted in $36,642/QALY over 10 years, compared to biologic alone. In the probabilistic analysis, combination statin and biologic were the dominant strategy in 60% of the simulations.CONCLUSIONS: This research provided evidence supporting the cost-effectiveness of using adjunctive statin therapy in patients with RA.