Health-Related Quality of Life as Measured with EQ-5D among Populations with and without Specific Chronic Conditions: A Population-Based Survey in Shaanxi Province, China

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Abstract

Introduction

The aim of this study was to examine health-related quality of life (HRQoL) as measured by EQ-5D and to investigate the influence of chronic conditions and other risk factors on HRQoL based on a distributed sample located in Shaanxi Province, China.

Methods

A multi-stage stratified cluster sampling method was performed to select subjects. EQ-5D was employed to measure the HRQoL. The likelihood that individuals with selected chronic diseases would report any problem in the EQ-5D dimensions was calculated and tested relative to that of each of the two reference groups. Multivariable linear regression models were used to investigate factors associated with EQ VAS.

Results

The most frequently reported problems involved pain/discomfort (8.8%) and anxiety/depression (7.6%). Nearly half of the respondents who reported problems in any of the five dimensions were chronic patients. Higher EQ VAS scores were associated with the male gender, higher level of education, employment, younger age, an urban area of residence, access to free medical service and higher levels of physical activity. Except for anemia, all the selected chronic diseases were indicative of a negative EQ VAS score. The three leading risk factors were cerebrovascular disease, cancer and mental disease. Increases in age, number of chronic conditions and frequency of physical activity were found to have a gradient effect.

Conclusion

The results of the present work add to the volume of knowledge regarding population health status in this area, apart from the known health status using mortality and morbidity data. Medical, policy, social and individual attention should be given to the management of chronic diseases and improvement of HRQoL. Longitudinal studies must be performed to monitor changes in HRQoL and to permit evaluation of the outcomes of chronic disease intervention programs.

Related collections

Most cited references 12

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The EuroQol Group first met in 1987 to test the feasibility of jointly developing a standardised non-disease-specific instrument for describing and valuing health-related quality of life. From the outset the Group has been multi-country, multi-centre, and multi-disciplinary. The EuroQol instrument is intended to complement other forms of quality of life measures, and it has been purposefully developed to generate a cardinal index of health, thus giving it considerable potential for use in economic evaluation. Considerable effort has been invested by the Group in the development and valuation aspects of health status measurement. Earlier work was reported upon in 1990; this paper is a second 'corporate' effort detailing subsequent developments. The concepts underlying the EuroQol framework are explored with particular reference to the generic nature of the instrument. The valuation task is reviewed and some evidence on the methodological requirements for measurement is presented. A number of special issues of considerable interest and concern to the Group are discussed: the modelling of data, the duration of health states and the problems surrounding the state 'dead'. An outline of some of the applications of the EuroQol instrument is presented and a brief commentary on the Group's ongoing programme of work concludes the paper.

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The EQ-5D is a brief, multiattribute, preference-based health status measure. This article describes the development of a statistical model for generating US population-based EQ-5D preference weights. A multistage probability sample was selected from the US adult civilian noninstitutional population. Respondents valued 13 of 243 EQ-5D health states using the time trade-off (TTO) method. Data for 12 states were used in econometric modeling. The TTO valuations were linearly transformed to lie on the interval [-1, 1]. Methods were investigated to account for interaction effects caused by having problems in multiple EQ-5D dimensions. Several alternative model specifications (eg, pooled least squares, random effects) also were considered. A modified split-sample approach was used to evaluate the predictive accuracy of the models. All statistical analyses took into account the clustering and disproportionate selection probabilities inherent in our sampling design. Our D1 model for the EQ-5D included ordinal terms to capture the effect of departures from perfect health as well as interaction effects. A random effects specification of the D1 model yielded a good fit for the observed TTO data, with an overall R of 0.38, a mean absolute error of 0.025, and 7 prediction errors exceeding 0.05 in absolute magnitude. The D1 model best predicts the values for observed health states. The resulting preference weight estimates represent a significant enhancement of the EQ-5D's utility for health status assessment and economic analysis in the US.

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Ala Alwan, David MacLean, Leanne Riley … (2010)

The burden of chronic, non-communicable diseases in low-income and middle-income countries is increasing. We outline a framework for monitoring of such diseases and review the mortality burden and the capacity of countries to respond to them. We show data from WHO data sources and published work for prevalence of tobacco use, overweight, and cause-specific mortality in 23 low-income and middle-income countries with a high burden of non-communicable disease. Data for national capacity for chronic disease prevention and control were generated from a global assessment that was done in WHO member states in 2009-10. Although reliable data for cause-specific mortality are scarce, non-communicable diseases were estimated to be responsible for 23·4 million (or 64% of the total) deaths in the 23 countries that we analysed, with 47% occurring in people who were younger than 70 years. Tobacco use and overweight are common in most of the countries and populations we examined, but coverage of cost-effective interventions to reduce these risk factors is low. Capacity for prevention and control of non-communicable diseases, including monitoring and surveillance operations nationally, is inadequate. A surveillance framework, including a minimum set of indicators covering exposures and outcomes, is essential for policy development and assessment and for monitoring of trends in disease. Technical, human, and fiscal resource constraints are major impediments to the establishment of effective prevention and control programmes. Despite increasing awareness and commitment to address chronic disease, concrete actions by global partners to plan and implement cost-effective interventions are inadequate. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Author and article information

Contributors

David W. Dowdy: Role: Editor

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): PLoS One

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): PLoS ONE

Journal ID (publisher-id): plos

Journal ID (pmc): plosone

Title: PLoS ONE

Publisher: Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )

ISSN (Electronic): 1932-6203

Publication date Collection: 2013

Publication date (Electronic): 2 July 2013

Volume: 8

Issue: 7

Electronic Location Identifier: e65958

Affiliations

[1 ]Department of Health Statistics, and the Ministry of Education Key Lab of Hazard Assessment and Control in Special Operational Environment, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, China

[2 ]Department of Economics and Finance, School of Social Sciences, Brunel University, London, United Kingdom

[3 ]Institute for Cardiovascular Disease, Chang Zhi Medical College, Shanxi, China

[4 ]Division of Medical Service, Xijing Hospital, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, China

[5 ]Center of Health Statistics, Health General Office of Shaanxi Province, Shaanxi Province, China

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, United States of America

Author notes

* E-mail: xuyongy@ 123456fmmu.edu.cn

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Conceived and designed the experiments: YX LG YL. Performed the experiments: YX ZT HT. Analyzed the data: ZT YL. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: ZT YL. Wrote the paper: ZT SL YL WC.

Article

Publisher ID: PONE-D-12-35328

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0065958

PMC ID: 3699581

PubMed ID: 23843948

SO-VID: a57bae53-25e7-4541-a6d6-05703277a08a

License:

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

History

Date received : 4 November 2012

Date accepted : 30 April 2013

Page count

Pages: 10

Funding

Financial support of this study was provided by the National Nature Science Foundation (No. 81072393). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.