QoL Impairment With Prurigo Nodularis on Par With Other Chronic Systemic Conditions

Quality-of-life impairment in patients with the inflammatory skin disease prurigo nodularis is significant and on par with impairment from other chronic systemic conditions, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

“Prurigo nodularis is also associated with a substantial individual economic burden, emphasizing the necessity of research on effective treatment options,” advised corresponding author Shawn G. Kwatra, MD, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, and coauthors.

The study used the Health Utilities Index Mark 3 questionnaire to assess health-related quality of life in 36 patients with prurigo nodularis. Researchers compared patient data with data for a control population of 4187 US adults from the 2002-2003 Joint Canada/United States Survey of Health.

Overall health performance was lower for patients with prurigo nodularis compared with controls. Mean scores were 0.52 ± 0.06 for patients with prurigo nodularis, according to the study, and 0.86 ± 0.003 for controls.

Worse health performance associated with prurigo nodularis was most prominent in the pain subdomain, multivariable regression analysis revealed.

“This correlated to an average of 6.5 lifetime quality-adjusted life years lost per patient,” the authors reported, “translating to an individual lifetime economic burden of $323,292 and a societal burden of $38.8 billion.”

Reference:
Whang KA, Le TK, Khanna R, et al. Health-related quality of life and economic burden of prurigo nodularis. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2022;86(3):573-580. doi:10.1016/j.jaad.2021.05.036