Quality of life and patient preferences among Danish patients with ulcerative colitis – results from a survey study

Abstract

Objective: To explore health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and assess preferences for medical treatment attributes to obtain information of the relative importance of the different attributes in a Danish population with ulcerative colitis (UC).

Methods: We used data from an online survey collected in March 2018 among people with self-reported UC. A total of 302 eligible respondents answered the HRQoL questionnaires (EuroQol-5 Dimensions (EQ-5D-5L) and the Short Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire (SIBDQ)), and 212 also completed the discrete choice experiment (DCE). The probability of choosing an alternative from a number of choices in the DCE was estimated using a conditional logit model.

Results: The respondents had an average SIBDQ score of 4.5 and an HRQoL score of 0.77, applying the EQ-5D-5L questionnaire. HRQoL correlated with disease severity, and the respondents had lower HRQoL than did a gender- and age-matched subset of the Danish population. The most important medical treatment attribute was efficacy within eight weeks. Additionally, respondents stated a preference for avoiding taking steroids, for fast onset of effect and for oral formulations.

Conclusions: HRQoL correlates with disease severity, and patients with UC have lower HRQoL than the general population. The most important treatment attribute was efficacy, but patients also would like to avoid steroids, value fast onset of effect and prefer oral formulations.

Keywords:

• Patient preference
• quality of life
• ulcerative colitis
• inflammatory bowel diseases
• survey study

Transparency

Declaration of funding

This work was supported by Pfizer Denmark.

Declaration of financial/other relationships

LMH is an employee at Pfizer Denmark. SES and HHJ are employees at Incentive. Incentive is a paid vendor of Pfizer Denmark. The authors report no other conflicts of interest in this work. Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge Arne Yndestad and Trine Pilgaard, both employees of Pfizer, for their review of the final article.