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Parents preferences for drug treatments in juvenile idiopathic arthritis: A discrete choice experiment
Arthritis Care & Research , 04/16/2012
Burnett HF et al. – Parents of children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) demonstrated strong preferences for treatments that reduced pain and improve daily functioning regardless of the associated side–effects, level of responsibility required for drug administration, and days missed from school. Parents of children with longer disease durations and those who had been prescribed aggressive therapies had a greater preference for treatment effectiveness. These findings support the need for considering parental preferences in decisions regarding the choice of treatment for JIA.
Methods- A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted with 105 parents of children with JIA who were cared for by a rheumatologist at The Hospital for Sick Children in Canada.
- Attributes evaluated included: ‘drug treatment’, ‘child reported pain from arthritis’, ‘participation in daily activities’, ‘side–effects’, ‘days missed from school’, and ‘drug cost’.
- Multinomial logit regression was used to estimate the relative importance of each attribute level and interaction terms.
- Parents made trade–offs between characteristics of the drug treatments and health outcomes.
- ‘Participation in daily activities’ was the most important attribute, followed by ‘child reported pain’, and ‘drug cost’.
- Parents of children with longer disease durations had stronger preferences for improved participation in daily activities, while parents of older JIA patients had stronger preferences for improved control of pain.
