Estimating EQ-5D by age and sex for the UK
Age adjustment of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is routinely conducted in cost effectiveness models. Adjustments are made to reflect the fact that quality of life for the general population declines with age.
The 2022 NICE Methods Guide also proposes that estimates of disease severity are used to attach greater weight to health benefits in more severe conditions. These calculations also require estimates of health utility by age. NICE does not recommend any specific source and, as a result, submissions differ in the way age adjustments are made.
This report provides information on different sources of EQ-5D-3L by age. It also makes an assessment of the sensitivity of calculations of absolute and proportional shortfall to different sources of evidence for the age-EQ5D relationship, drawn from a sample of previous NICE Technology Appraisals.
DSU report
This report provides estimates of EQ-5D-3L by age and sex, for use in economic models. It covers existing estimates available from published studies and newer estimates derived from more recent data.
M Hernández Alava, S Pudney, A Wailoo (2022) Estimating EQ-5D by Age and Sex for the UK (PDF, 428KB). NICE DSU report
** Please note the version of the report now includes a corrected error in the Appendix, for the first coefficient for females, which now reads -0.0774, rather than -0.774 .
Excel download: Expected EQ-5D-3L by age and sex and covariance matrices of the models using the HSE 2014 dataset (XLS, 58KB)