Elsevier

Value in Health

Volume 18, Issue 5, July 2015, Pages 638-645
Value in Health

Patient-Reported Outcomes
Quality of Life and Utility Measurement in a Large Clinical Trial Sample of Patients with Mild to Moderate Alzheimer’s Disease: Determinants and Level of Changes Observed

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jval.2015.03.1787Get rights and content
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Abstract

Objective

To evaluate the performance (in terms of responsiveness to change, associations with other criterion standards, and indicators of Alzheimer’s disease [AD] severity) of a quality-of-life measure (Quality of Life in Alzheimer’s Disease [QOL-AD]) and a health utility measure (Health Utilities Index Mark 3 [HUI-3]) from two recently completed clinical trials of a new drug for AD.

Methods

Change from baseline scores was calculated, and treatment effects were analyzed using mixed models for repeated measures. Three separate models were then estimated to examine the association between the quality-of-life/utility end points and the clinical and other health outcome end points measured during the trials, including cognition, function, behavior, and dependence.

Results

The performance of the two measures differed. Subject-assessed QOL-AD was found to be weakly associated with clinical measures of cognition, and with caregiver reports of function, behavior, and dependence, and showed little movement over time and did not appear to differ by baseline AD severity. Proxy-assessed QOL-AD scores were consistently lower than subject-assessed scores, and the level of decline in QOL-AD was greater using proxy-assessed QOL-AD. Proxy-assessed HUI-3 scores were more strongly associated with clinical measures of cognition, function, behavior, and dependence than the subject- and proxy-assessed QOL-AD scores. Larger proportionate changes over 78 weeks were observed with HUI-3 scores and greater separation in HUI-3 scores by baseline severity.

Conclusions

Subject-assessed QOL-AD is less likely than proxy-assessed QOL-AD to respond to changes in clinical measures used to track progression in clinical trials of subjects with mild to moderate AD. Proxy-assessed HUI-3 assessments were more in line with other outcome assessments and could therefore be better outcome measures to evaluate clinical progression in mild to moderate AD.

Keywords

Alzheimer’s disease
Health Utility Index (HUI)
patient-reported outcomes
Quality of Life in Alzheimer’s Disease (QOL-AD)

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Conflict of interest: Loretto Lacey and Chris Leibman were full-time employees of Janssen Alzheimer Immunotherapy Research & Development, LLC, at the time the work was conducted. Joel Bobula, Katja Rüdell, and Jose Alvir are employees of Pfizer, Inc.