OBJECTIVES: Meningococcal serotype-B (MenB)-disease causes high case-fatality, severe sequelae, and a quality of life (QoL) loss in patients and their families. The objective is to quantify the loss in quality adjusted life years (QALYs) due to MenB-disease in Germany.

METHODS: A hypothetical cohort consisting of the average number of age-specific MenB-disease cases in Germany between 2001 and 2015 was followed until their deaths. Probabilities and utilities of MenB-disease related sequelae and German utility-baseline norms were derived from the literature. A factor of 1.48 was applied to calculate spillover effects from patients to the QoL of their families and a factor of 1.09 for the parents’ bereavement in case of death. A sensitivity analysis considered 3% annual discounting.

RESULTS: The cohort’s undiscounted QALY loss is 4,317.87 resulting in 12.58 QALYs per case (5.66 QALYs discounted). The highest QALY loss for an age-group can be found in the ‘1-4 (years old)’ with 1,273.04, followed by a loss of 893.33 in infants ‘<1’, i.e. 50% of the population QALY loss is attributable to these two groups. Age-groups with highest MenB carriage ‘15 to 19’ and ‘20 to 24’ amount to 22% of the total QALY loss. QALY loss per case in the age-groups ‘<1’ and ‘1 to 4’ is high with 16.42 and 16.14 contrasting to 10.61 and 9.53 in ’15 to 19’ and ’20 to 24’. About 51% of the QALY loss is attributable to sequelae, 17.1% to spillover and 3.9% to parents’ bereavement.

CONCLUSIONS: The hypothetical cohort’s QALY loss in Germany corresponds to 4,318 years in perfect health despite MenB being a rare disease. Comparing the high QALY loss per case with other diseases (e.g. Hepatitis C: undiscounted loss of 3.0 QALYs/case) and the QALY shortfall indicate the disease severity of MenB particularly among the youngest age groups, that could be protected through universal mass-vaccination.