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Published on: July 11, 2013
Patients' preferences for atopic dermatitis treatments in Europe: a discrete choice experiment
Katja C Heinz1, Charlotte Beaudart2, Axel De Greef3,4
1Department of Health Services Research, Care and Public Health Research Institute (CAPHRI), Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Background:
Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic skin disease that affects patients' quality of life. Adequate treatment is important but patients' preferences are not fully understood. This study aimed to investigate which treatment attributes are most important for adult European AD patients.
Research Design And Methods:
A discrete choice experiment was conducted. Participants were asked to choose their preferred hypothetical treatment option in 15 choice sets. Six included attributes were identified by consulting literature, patients, physicians, and preference experts. A mixed logit model was applied to estimate preference coefficients.
Results:
All attributes were important for seventy-five participants (79% female, mean age 37.8 years). Itch reduction was most relevant (55.95%), followed by infection risk (15.96%), mode of administration (9.64%), long-term diseases management (8.11%), onset time (5.33%), and availability on the market (5.01%). Participants prefer emollients without preservatives and oral pills, while emollients with preservatives and self-injections are associated with utility loss.
Conclusions:
This study identified most important treatment attributes for AD patients. It could improve AD patients' access to suitable therapies as findings might support development of better aligned treatments and provide new perspectives for joint treatment decision-making. Main limitation was low number of participants, although significant results were still achieved.
