OBJECTIVES: To estimate health utility decrement (i.e., disutilities) associated with four different treatment-related attributes based on preferences of type 2 diabetes (T2DM) patients in China.

METHODS: Four attributes, including administration mode, storage temperature, dose frequency, and weight change, were identified through published literature and interviews with clinicians (N=7) and patients (N=16). A representative sample of T2DM patients was recruited from eight cities in China, stratified by age and sex. Respondents completed seven time trade off (TTO) tasks during face-to-face interviews. Random-effect model was selected for TTO data. Total sample was used in the main analysis, and patients categorized by the number of medication, needle phobia, duration of treatment, health related quality of life and travel frequency were used in the subgroup analysis.

RESULTS: 300 patients (52.67% male, mean [SD] age 50.62 [11.62] years) were included. Of the four attributes, administration mode was associated with the largest disutility. Compared with oral treatment, disutility of injection treatment was 0.0222 (P<0.001). The mean disutility of once daily, twice daily and three times daily versus once weekly treatment was 0.0007 (P=0.872), 0.0151 (P=0.001) and 0.0125 (P=0.005), respectively. The disutility associated with weight change ranged from 0.0023 (-3%, P=0.586) to 0.0157 (+5%, P<0.001) compared with -5%. And whether the storage environment requires low temperature had no significant effect on the disutility (-0.0038, P=0.431). Patients who had lower number of medication and duration of treatment, higher needle phobia, higher health related quality of life and higher travel frequency gave a larger disutility to injection versus oral treatment.

CONCLUSIONS: Administration mode appears to be the most important of the four dimensions from the patients’ perspective, followed by dose frequency and weight change. Storage temperature had little effect on utility. Results suggest that it may be important to consider treatment-related attributes when choosing medication for patients with T2DM.