25 September 2018 - Health-related quality of life data generated by generic, preference-based instruments are highly demanded in health policy decision making, because they allow for direct comparisons of HRQoL outcomes between disease areas. 

Efthymiadou et al. aimed to quantify HRQoL outcomes in breast cancer (BC), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), multiple sclerosis (MS), rare cancers (RC), and rare disease (RD) patients and understand the patterns that differentiate HRQoL outcomes between these disease areas, and more specifically between rare and more common disease population groups.

Average utility loss was 53.5%, 32.5%, and 33.3% for RD, RA, and MS patients, respectively, in contrast to 18.6% for BC and RC patients. Statistically significant differences (p < .05) were observed between disease groups in all EQ-5D-5L domain outcomes, apart from that of “Anxiety/Depression.” Severe and/or extreme problems were reported in performing usual activities for RD and RC (34% and 13% of overall problems reported respectively), mobility for MS (18%), pain/discomfort for RA (13%), and anxiety/depression for BC (7%) patients.

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