Benefit-risk tradeoff preferences for chronic hand eczema treatments

Abstract

Hand eczema affects approximately 16% of the US population. The long-term prognosis is poor, and 5–7% experience severe chronic hand eczema (sCHE) that interferes with daily activities. Treatments for CHE may be ineffective or associated with adverse events (AEs) that may dissuade patients from pursuing or continuing treatment. For quantification of patient experiences and benefit-risk preferences for outcomes associated with CHE treatments, a web-based discrete choice experiment survey was administered to patients in the United States with a self-reported physician diagnosis of CHE and severe symptoms not resolved with topical agents. Respondents answered a series of treatment choice questions, each requiring evaluation of a pair of hypothetical profiles of medications for sCHE defined by efficacy and risk of several AEs. Improvement in CHE clearing of 25–50% was rated from 1.5 to 3.1 times as important as eliminating a 5% risk of permanent bone problems. The mean maximum acceptable risk of permanent vision problems in exchange for an improvement in CHE clearing of 25–50% ranged from 3.4% to 4.8%. This study demonstrated that patients with CHE rated efficacy improvements associated with treatment of sCHE as more important than eliminating the risks of specific AEs.

Keywords:

• Patient preference
• treatment characteristics
• maximum acceptable risk
• discrete choice experiment

Disclosure statement

Assistance with the preparation of this manuscript was provided by Ellen Shnidman, MSc and Daniel Sinsimer, PhD (assistance with production of the draft outline, production of the first draft of the manuscript, compilation of the tables and figures, collation of the authors’ comments), at MediTech Media and supported by Stiefel. A. Brett Hauber and Juan Marcos Gonzalez are employees of RTI Health Solutions. This work was funded by Stiefel, a GSK company, under a contract with RTI Health Solutions. Ateesha Mohamed was an employee of RTI Health Solutions at the time this study was conducted and currently is employed by and is a stockholder of Bayer HealthCare. Angelyn Fairchild was an employee of RTI Health Solutions at the time this study was conducted. Susan C. Zelt was an employee of Stiefel at the time this study was conducted and is still a GSK shareholder. She is currently employed by ViiV Healthcare. Ole Graff is employed by Stiefel, a GSK company and holds equity ownership in GSK.