Hepatitis B

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.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/93154.php