Health-Related Utility Weights in a Cohort of Real-World Crohn's Disease Patients.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Estimating health-related utility weights in Crohn's Disease [CD] patients is crucial for assessing the cost-effectiveness of new pharmaceutical interventions. Values used in most analyses are based on secondary data and vary substantially among studies. We estimated utility weights in a consecutive sample of real-world CD patients. METHODS: Patients enrolled in an ongoing socioeconomic study of CD in the Israeli adult patient population completed a self-administered Short Form 36 health survey [SF-36] and Short Inflammatory Bowel Disease [SIBDQ] questionnaires and were assessed for their current clinical status, including the Harvey-Bradshaw Index [HBI] of disease severity. For each patient enrolled we calculated a utility weight using the SF-6D scoring system. RESULTS: The cohort comprised 425 patients [40% male] with mean age of 39.1 [± 14.0] years. The average HBI was 6.1 [± 5.4]; 198 [47%] patients were in remission state [HBI < 5], 99 [23%] had mild disease [HBI 5-7], 102 [25%] moderate [HBI 8-16], and 26 [6%] severe disease [HBI > 16]. Mean utility weights were 0.667 in all patients, 0.744 in patients with disease remission, 0.638 in mild disease, 0.587 in moderate disease, and 0.505 in severe disease. The significant predictors of utility weights in a multivariable regression analysis were the HBI [ß = -0.494; p < 0.001], economic status [ß = 0.198; p < 0.001], time since diagnosis [ß = 0.106; p < 0.001], male [compared with female] gender [ß = 0.099; p = 0.009], hospital admission in the past year for any cause [ß = -0.086; p = 0.027], and treatment with steroids [ß = -0.100; p = 0.012] where ß denotes the standardised regression coefficients; model adjusted R(2) = 0.428. CONCLUSIONS: Utility weights for patients in the remission and mild disease states were generally lower as compared with values used in published cost-effectiveness analyses. These values should be considered when assessing the value for money of future interventions for CD.