OBJECTIVES

: Our objectives were to investigate the humanistic and economic burden of HCV.

METHODS

: Systematic reviews of HCV-related humanistic and economic burden were identified through Medline and Embase. HRQoL, resource use, and cost of HCV patients were extracted.

RESULTS

: Of the 1218 studies identified, 8 systematic reviews were included, with 7 reviews considering humanistic burden and 1 considering economic burden. For humanistic burden, 5 reviews reported quantitative results. Three reviews reported utility value including 23 studies and covering 9,221 persons from China, Canada, United States, Germany, United Kingdom and Korea. Utility value was mostly elicited with indirect measurement (n=20) using SF-36 (0.62-0.89, n=18), EQ-5D (0.57-0.79, n=2), HUI2 (0.71-0.84, n=1) and HUI3 (0.69-0.74, n=1)). Utility value was also elicited by direct method in 3 studies using visual analogue scale (0.57-0.92, n=3), standard gambling (0.60-0.83, n=2) and time trade-off (0.72-0.90, n=1). The disutility for mild chronic hepatitis C with values ranged from -0.03 to -0.16 by SF-6D and from -0.08 to -0.26 by EQ-5D, and for decompensated cirrhosis ranged from -0.11 to -0.22 by SF-36 and from -0.14 to -0.33 by EQ-5D.Two reviews including 15 studies reported mean differences between HCV and healthy controls across the 8 SF-36 scales. The largest impact of HCV was in the role physical scale (-15.8 points), followed by the role emotional scale (-13.0) and the general health scale (-12.6). Qualitative HRQol was reported in 2 reviews including 46 studies. HCV was found associated with poorer HRQoL and health state due to physical symptoms and stigmatization. The review for economic burden reported absenteeism including 11 studies. Compared with healthy controls, HCV patients had higher rates of absenteeism (3.0-5.5% VS. 4.9-8.6%), presenteeism (13.5-21.0% VS. 16.7-27.1%), and overall work impairment (15.0-18.3% VS. 19.4-30.5%).

CONCLUSIONS

: HCV patients have a low HRQoL and substantial work impairment. However, information on economic burden for HCV remains limited.