OBJECTIVES: Type 2 diabetes (T2D) causes globally significant public health and economic burden. It increases mortality and lowers quality of life as well as increases the cost of healthcare. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of T2D and the presence of comorbidities on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in the Finnish population using the EQ-5D-5L instrument.

METHODS: The study was based on a population survey conducted by the Finnish Medicines Agency. In total, 5405 persons responded to the survey. Of these, 449 (8.3%) persons were identified as T2D patients. Persons were identified by use of medication used for treatingT2D. Since no Finnish EQ-5D-5L tariff currently exists, the UK tariff was used. As a sensitivity analysis, a crosswalk algorithm was used to convert EQ-5D-5L values into EQ-5D-3L values. Two-part model was used to examine the association between T2D and EQ-5D scores.

RESULTS: The mean (SD) age of the respondents was 53.4(16.2) years and 44.4% of them were male. Mean EQ-5D-5L scores of respondents with no diabetes (n=4 856) was 0.90 (0.13) and 0.85 (0.16) among respondents with T2D. The crosswalk EQ-5D-3L scores were 0.83 (0.15) for non-diabetics on 0.76 (0.18) for T2D patients. The marginal effect of T2D was -0.036 using EQ-5D-5L values and -0.046 using the crosswalk values. The EQ-5D scores of T2D patients were lower compared to all non-diabetics (i.e., with any number of comorbidities) when they had 3 or more T2D-related comorbidities (-0.043 at 3 comorbidities and -0.152 at 4 or more comorbidities). All results were statistically significant.

CONCLUSIONS: T2D is associated with a lower HRQoL which can be detected with the EQ-5D-5L instrument. When compared to population without diabetes, the disutility associated with T2D increases as more comorbidities appear. Thus, these results suggest that preventing comorbidities among T2D patients should be a priority.