The Impact Of Hepatitis B On Quality Of Life

Main Category: Liver Disease / Hepatitis
Article Date: 07 Jan 2008 - 3:00 PDT

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With over 350 million people affected worldwide, infection with the chronic hepatitis B virus causes considerable distress to individuals and results in substantial global economic loss through costs of treatment and indirectly, through lost productivity. However, the impact on the quality of life of patients is not well studied and despite the availability of new treatment options, little information is available on how infected and uninfected persons value the impact of health states arising from the hepatitis B virus.

The objective of this study was to estimate preference-based "utility weights", for six increasingly severe health states that occur with chronic infection with the hepatitis B virus. This information was elicited from respondents living in six jurisdictions, in North America, Europe and Asia, that ranged from low to high prevalence of chronic hepatitis B infection.

The authors interviewed 534 chronic hepatitis B-infected patients and 600 uninfected respondents making this one of the largest valuations of health states ever published, for any disease. The results show that the chronic hepatitis B and compensated cirrhosis health states have a moderate impact on health related quality of life, and there is a large detrimental effect on quality of life associated with decompensated cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. There were geographic differences in the impact of the different health states. A greater impact on quality of life was observed in Hong Kong and mainland China which are jurisdictions with high prevalence of disease. The authors speculate that finding be due to greater fear of the social consequences of infection. A practical implication of the inter-country differences is that economic evaluations may benefit from country-specific utility estimates.

The study represents a successful collaboration of outcomes researchers from Bristol-Myers Squibb Uchenna Iloeje, Eskinder Tafesse and Jayanti Mukherjee, academic liver specialists Kris Kowdley, Robert Gish and Natalie Bzowej, and academic health services researchers Adrian Levy and Andrew Briggs.

The original study, "The Impact of Chronic Hepatitis B on Quality Of Life: A Multi-National Study of Utilities from Infected and Uninfected Persons," is to be published in Value in Health.

Value in Health is the official journal of the International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR).

Value in Health (ISSN 1098-3015) publishes papers, concepts, and ideas that advance the field of pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research and help health care leaders to make decisions that are solidly evidence-based. The journal is published bi-monthly and has a regular readership of over 3,000 clinicians, decision-makers, and researchers worldwide.

ISPOR is a nonprofit, international organization that strives to translate pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research into practice to ensure that society allocates scarce health care resources wisely, fairly, and efficiently.

Value in Health Volume 11 Issue 5
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http://www.ispor.org