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The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has recommended a new treatment for children with a growth disturbance.
Somatrogon (Ngenla) is once-weekly injectable medication, and will be available to children and young people aged three and over who have insufficient secretion of growth hormone.
Research has shown somatrogon is as effective as one preparation of somatropin, which is injected daily. NICE says this recommendation will therefore help children and young people avoid the pain and discomfort caused by a daily injection.
What are growth disturbances?
Growth disturbances occur when the pituitary gland produces too little or too much growth hormone. This disorder can prevent children from growing to a normal height, weight or sexual maturity.
Growth disturbances can be treated, however, by injecting growth hormone into the bloodstream. If a child has too much growth hormone, possible treatments include surgery to remove the tumour, medicines and radiation therapy.1
Until now, somatropin was the only treatment recommended by NICE for children with growth disturbance in the UK.
A new milestone for NICE
The approval of somatrogon also marks a change of appraisal method for NICE. It is the first medication to go through all steps of its new proportionate approach to technology appraisals project.
The evaluation was streamlined and completed 25% faster than the usual cost comparison process. This was achieved by removing some sections of the process, without compromising the rigour of NICE’s evaluation techniques.
Helen Knight, director of medicines evaluation, at NICE, said: “The recommendation of somatrogon is a welcome development for the care of children with a growth disturbance caused by growth hormone deficiency.
“It is also a milestone for us as an organisation as we’ve been able to evaluate this drug 25 per cent faster and we expect to improve this even further in future topics under this new proportionate way of working.
“We want to get the best care to patients fast, while ensuring value for money for the taxpayer, and at the same time creating useful and useable advice for the NHS.”
NICE hopes that in the future they can speed up the process further so that it is more than 35% faster.
Final guidance on somatrogon is expected to be published in February 2023.