Economy

This section presents an evaluation of the costs for the patient or the community of the treatment, and its possible profitability. All the data used for this evaluation are presented below.

Treatment costs

We first want to know how much will cost our capsule. We estimate that the anticipated market price of 1 capsule of Iron-Coli 10 cent. The relatively low market price of Iron-Coli capsule is due to the fact that it is easy to produce capsules with only one strand of bacteria. Further more the market price of current probiotic capsules is between 6 and 35 cent.^1,2,3 Moreover the patients will have to take 3 capsules each day. So our bacterial treatment price per patient and per year will cost: 0.10 x 3 x 365 = 110 euros (~151 $ on the 28/10/2013).

In France, according to Dr. Françoise Courtois (General Secretary of European Federation of Associations of Patients with Haemochromatosis), bloodletting is charged around 40 euros, but costs in reality around 60 euro. The French public welfare system takes charge of all the costs. If a bacterial treatment enables to save money, it will be a collective benefit. According to the presidents of patients' associations, the average number of bloodlettings per patient and per year is 5. The average cost of bloodletting treatment per patient and per year in France is around 300 euros (~413 $).

We established with our flush model that our treatment will decrease by two the iron absorption and thus by two the number of bloodleting for a patient. So the money saved per patient and per year is (300/2)-110=40 euros (~55 $).
This does not take into account the costs of a missing half-day's work, or the costs and time of transport, etc. Thus, the collective benefit could be even higher !

Treatment profitability

We estimated the cost of the lab' made capsule prototype around 3 cents. According to the presidents of patients' associations, there are around 100 000 patients in France, and 750 000 in Europe. Thus we could establish the profitability of our treatment in both France and Europe.

Conclusions

Our treatment will be benetial for both patients, community and pharmaceutical industries !
Further more, we did not into account other iron overload diseases as thalassemia; the benefitial and the profitability could be even higher !