Women’s treatment preferences for moderate-to-severe vasomotor symptoms
associated with menopause: insights from the WARMER study, a discrete
choice experiment
Abstract
Objective: Elicit preferences for treatment of vasomotor
symptoms (VMS) associated with menopause. Design: Discrete
choice experiment. Setting: Australia, Canada, Denmark, France,
Germany, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom. Population: Women aged
40–65 years, postmenopausal, self-reporting ≥14 moderate-to-severe VMS
episodes/week. Methods: Targeted review of published
literature, steering committee feedback, iterative qualitative
interviews and available clinical data identified potentially relevant
attributes of VMS treatments. Main Outcome Measures: Women made
a series of choices between two hypothetical treatments and an opt out
differing in moderate-to-severe VMS frequency, other menopause symptom
improvement, time to symptom improvement, 5-year risks of breast cancer,
blood clots and osteoporosis. Data analysed using a mixed-methods
approach. Relative attribute importance (RAI) captured the maximum
contribution of each attribute to treatment choice depending on expected
duration of hormone therapy (HT). Results: The most influential
attribute was 5-year blood clot risk (RAI 26.4–28.4%). Improving other
menopause symptoms had a 1.4 times greater effect on preferences than
reducing VMS frequency. Based on 5–9 years’ HT use (RR 1.97), breast
cancer risk was the fourth most important attribute. Improvements in
other menopause symptoms, VMS frequency reduction, onset time and of
osteoporosis risk reduction were 1.0–1.4 times more important than
remaining attributes. Women were willing to accept an extra 0.5% blood
clot risk of or an extra 0.25% breast cancer risk for every 10%
reduction in VMS frequency. Conclusions: Women valued safe
efficacious VMS treatment, with high importance on avoiding long-term
risks. Reducing VMS frequency mattered over and above wider menopause
symptoms.