Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Comparative Study
. 2016 Jul 18;14(1):105.
doi: 10.1186/s12955-016-0510-y.

A comparison of health utility scores calculated using United Kingdom and Canadian preference weights in persons with alzheimer's disease and their caregivers

Mingying Fang  1 , Mark Oremus  2 , Jean-Eric Tarride  3   4 , Parminder Raina  3 ; Canadian Willingness-to-pay Study Group
Collaborators, Affiliations
Comparative Study

A comparison of health utility scores calculated using United Kingdom and Canadian preference weights in persons with alzheimer's disease and their caregivers

Mingying Fang et al. Health Qual Life Outcomes. .

Abstract

Background: The use of the EQ-5D to asses the economic benefits of health technologies has led to questions about the cross-population transferability of preference weights to calculate health utility scores. The aim of this study is to investigate whether the use of UK and Canadian preference weights will lead to the calculation of different health utility scores in a sample of persons with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and their primary informal caregivers.

Methods: We recruited 216 patient-caregiver dyads from nine geriatric and memory clinics across Canada. Participants used the EQ-5D-3L to rate their health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL). EQ-5D-3L responses were transformed into health utility scores using UK and Canadian preference weights. The levels of agreement between the two sets of scores were assessed using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). Bland-Altman plots depicted individual-level differences between the two sets of scores. Differences in health utility scores were tested using the Wilcoxon signed rank sum test. A generalized linear model with a gamma distribution was used to examine whether participants' socio-demographic characteristics were associated with their health utility scores.

Results: The distributions of health utility scores derived from both the UK and Canadian preference weights were skewed to the left. The intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.94 (95 % CI: 0.92, 0.95) for persons with AD and 0.92 (95 % CI: 0.88, 0.94) for the caregivers. The Canadian weights yielded slightly higher median health utility scores than the UK weights for caregivers (median difference: 0.009; 95 % confidence interval: 0.007, 0.013). This finding persisted after stratifying by disease severity. Few socio-demographic characteristics were associated with the two sets of health utility scores.

Conclusions: Health utility scores exhibited small and clinically unimportant differences when calculated with UK versus Canadian preference weights in persons with AD and their caregivers. The original UK and Canadian population samples used to obtain the preference weights valued health states similarly.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; Caregiver; EQ-5D-3L; Health-related quality-of-life.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Distribution of health utility scores for persons with Alzheimer’s disease. AD = Alzheimer’s disease; UK = United Kingdom
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Distribution of health utility scores for caregivers. UK = United Kingdom
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Bland-Altman plots. AD = Alzheimer’s disease; UK = United Kingdom
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Kalaria RN, Maestre GE, Arizaga R, Friedland RP, Galasko D, Hall K, Luchsinger JA, Ogunniyi A, Perry EK, Potocnik F. Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia in developing countries: prevalence, management, and risk factors. Lancet Neurol. 2008;7:812–26. doi: 10.1016/S1474-4422(08)70169-8. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Lopez AD, Mathers CD, Ezzati M, Jamison DT, Murray CJ. Global and regional burden of disease and risk factors, 2001: systematic analysis of population health data. Lancet. 2006;367:1747–57. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(06)68770-9. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bowling A.Health-related quality of life: a discussion of the concept, its use and measurement. In Measuring disease: a review of disease-specific quality of life measurement scales. 2nd edition. Buckingham: Open University Press; 1995. p. 1-19.
    1. Loveman E, Green C, Kirby J, Takeda A, Picot J, Payne E, Clegg A. The clinical and cost-effectiveness of donepezil, rivastigmine, galantamine and memantine for Alzheimer’s disease. Health Technol Assess. 2006;10:1–160. doi: 10.3310/hta10010. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Räsänen P, Roine E, Sintonen H, Semberg-Konttinen V, Ryynänen O-P, Roine R. Use of quality-adjusted life years for the estimation of effectiveness of health care: A systematic literature review. Int J Technol Assess Health Care. 2006;22:235–41. doi: 10.1017/S0266462306051051. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types