Illustrating the relationship between the number of hypoglycaemia events, event rate reduction and the impact on estimates of quality of life improvement in health economic studies

The two approaches assuming diminishing marginal disutility were associated with an overall one year decline in health utility of 0.014, 0.024, 0.031 and 0.039 (D1) and 0.009, 0.022, 0.030 and 0.038 (D2) for annual event rates of 1, 5, 10 and 20 events per year. This compared to a one year utility decline of 0.005, 0.026, 0.052 and 0.104 using the static approach (S3) (Figure 2). Incremental utility gain for 1 NSHE avoided per year was 0.014, 0.002, 0.001 and 0.001 (D1), 0.009, 0.002, 0.001 and 0.001 (D2) and 0.005, 0.005, 0.005 and 0.005 (S3) for annual event rates of 1, 5, 10 and 20 events per year (Figure 3). Assuming a 50% reduction in annual NSHE rate for the comparator intervention was associated with a utility gains of 0.007, 0.005, 0.006 and 0.008 (D1), 0.004, 0.007, 0.008 and 0.008 (D2) and 0.003, 0.013, 0.026 and 0.052 (S3) for the compared annual event rates (Figure 4).