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Health-related quality of life in patients with alveolar echinococcosis: a cross-sectional study

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Abstract

Purpose

The Alveolar echinococcosis (AE) is a rare zoonosis caused by the parasite Echinococcus multilocularis. To date, nothing is known about the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients with AE. The aim of the study was to evaluate the HRQoL in patients with AE in comparison of the healthy population.

Methods

We used the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) questionnaire to evaluate the HRQoL. The SF-36 scales have a range of 0–100 (0 represents the worst and 100 the most favourable state of health). SAS Version 9.2 was used for the statistical analysis of AE-cases (n = 30) and the healthy control group (n = 35).

Results

The analysis showed that the HRQoL in people with AE is reduced in comparison with the control population. The study group consisted of 15 (50.0%) men and 15 (50.0%) women; the control group of 16 (45.7%) men and 19 (54.3%) women. The mean age was 55.73 ± 16.65 years, while that of the control group was 54.57 ± 15.34 years. The physical quality of life in patients with AE (45.21 ± 11.42) was not significantly less than that of the control group (50.54 ± 10.52); p = 0.0568. Nevertheless, AE-patients show lower SF-36 scores for the physical quality of life. For the mental quality of life, patients with AE had a significantly lower score (45.46 ± 10.57) than the control group (51.57 ± 9.04); p = 0.0154.

Conclusions

The HRQoL in people with AE is reduced in comparison with a control population. Assessment of the physical and mental quality of life in patients with AE may help to evaluate the patient outcome.

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Acknowledgements

Members of the echinococcosis working group: Thomas FE Barth, Sven Baumann, Doris Henne-Bruns, Tilmann Gräter, Andreas Hillenbrand, Tanja Kaltenbach, Frauke Theis.

Funding

The results are from a German Research Foundation (DFG) funded project called “Establishment of a national database for alveolar echinococcosis” (Ref. No. KA 4356/3-1).

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Correspondence to Julian Schmidberger.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

The study was approved by the local Ethics Committee approval and the Declaration of Helsinki (ref. No. 63/18).

Additional information

The members of Echinococcosis working group, Ulm are listed in Acknowledgements.

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Schmidberger, J., Weimer, H., Schlingeloff, P. et al. Health-related quality of life in patients with alveolar echinococcosis: a cross-sectional study. Infection 47, 67–75 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s15010-018-1219-0

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