Background: Health utilities are preference-based measures for health states which are typically used in economic analyses to estimate quality-adjusted life years. Our aim is to report the standard SF-6D health utility scores in Japanese patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) during treatment with different regimens.
Methods: Japanese patients were enrolled in clinical trials of sofosbuvir (SOF) used in combination with or without ledipasvir (LDV) and/or ribavirin (RBV). The SF-6D health utility scores were calculated at multiple time points from the SF-36 instrument.
Results: Four hundred ninety-four patients with HCV (genotype 1 and 2) were enrolled: 19% with cirrhosis, 48% with a prior history of anti-HCV treatment. Of those, 153 received SOF + RBV, 170 received LDV/SOF + RBV, 171 received LDV/SOF for 12 weeks; the SVR rates were: 97, 98 and 100%, respectively. Patients treated with the three regimens had similar SF-6D scores before treatment (p = 0.87): 76.1 ± 11.5. During treatment with RBV containing regimen, patients experienced a decrement in their health utility scores to 74.3 ± 12.5 by the end of treatment (p = 0.03), while patients treated with RBV-free LDV/SOF had their SF-6D scores improved to 79.2 ± 12.8 after 12 weeks of treatment (p = 0.0004). At post-treatment week 12, in patients who achieved SVR-12, the SF-6D scores were similar between the treatment regimens (p = 0.36), and an average improvement of +1.4 points from baseline (p = 0.01) was noted. In multivariate analysis, the use of RBV was independently associated with lower utility score during treatment (beta = 4.7 ± 1.6, p < 0.0001).
Conclusion: Health utilities are lower in Japanese HCV patients and tend to improve after clearance of infection.
Keywords: HCV; Health utilities; Health-related quality of life; Interferon; Ledipasvir; Ribavirin; Sofosbuvir.