This paper identifies several aspects that should be enhanced to promote comparability between studies and countries, and it sends key messages for incorporating informal care costs to adequately measure the economic impact of diseases.

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The HIV/AIDS disease represent a priority for all health authorities in all countries and it also represents serious added socioeconomic problems for societies over the world. The aim of this paper is to analize the economic impact associated to the HIV/AIDS in an European context. We conducted a systematic literature review for five different countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and United Kingdom) and searched five databases. Three types of analyses were undertaken: descriptive statistics; quantitative analysis to calculate mean costs; and comparison across countries. 26 papers were included in this study containing seventy-six cost estimates. Most of the studies analyzed the health care cost of treatment of HIV/AIDS. Only 50% of the cost estimates provided mean lymphocyte count describing the patients’ disease stage. Approximately thirty percent of cost estimates did not indicate the developmental stage of the illness in the patients included. There is a high degree of variability in the estimated annual cost per patient of the treatments across countries. There is also a great disparity in total healh care costs for patients with lymphocyte counts between 200CD4+/mm3 and 500 CD4/mm3, although the reason of variation is unclear. In spite of the potential economic impact in terms of productivity losses and cost of formal and informal care, few studies have set out to estimate the non-medical costs of HIV/AIDS in the countries selected. Another important result is that, despite the low HIV/AIDS prevalence, its economic burden is very relevant in terms of the total health care costs in this five countries. This study also shows that there are relatively few studies of HIV costs in European countries compared to other diseases. Finally, we conclude that the methodology used in many of the studies carried out leaves ample room for improvement and that there is a need for these studies to reflect the economic impact of HIV/AIDS beyond health care including other components of social burden.

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