SF-6D utility scores for alcohol use disorder status and alcohol consumption risk levels in the US population

Aims: To estimate US population health utilities for subgroups defined by alcohol use disorder (AUD) status and consumption level. Design: Cross-sectional survey. Setting: Community settings in the United States (i.e. excluding institutional settings). Participants: A total of 36,042 adults (age 18+) in non-institutional settings in the United States. Measurements: We used 12-item Short Form Survey (SF-12) data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions–III to calculate mean Short Form–6 dimension (SF-6D) utility scores across World Health Organization alcohol consumption risk levels—very high risk, high risk, medium risk, low risk and an additional abstinent level—for three groups: (1) the general population (n = 36,042), (2) individuals with life-time AUD (n = 9925) and (3) individuals with current AUD (n = 5083), and assessed minimally important differences (MIDs) between consumption levels. Each group is a subset of the previous group. Findings: The general population's mean SF-6D utility was higher than that of individuals with life-time or current AUD across all consumption risk levels (0.79 versus 0.76 for both AUD groups). For all groups, SF-6D utilities increased as consumption risk level decreased to non-abstinent levels, and reducing consumption from very high risk to any lower level was associated with a statistically significant and meaningful improvement in utility. For individuals with life-time or current AUD, becoming abstinent from high-, medium- and low-risk levels was associated with significantly and meaningfully worse utilities. Conclusions: Higher alcohol consumption risk levels appear to be associated with lower health index scores for the general population and individuals with a history of alcohol use disorder, meaning that higher alcohol consumption is associated with worse health-related quality of life