Health-Related Quality of Life in Children with DuchenneMuscular Dystrophy: A Review

In pediatric chronic illness, improving health-related quality of life (HRQOL) has become one of the most important goals of disease management. Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a debilitating, progressive and chronic neuromuscular disorder affecting boys. The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of published research on HRQOL in the pediatric DMD population, describe the instruments used and summarize the study findings. The databases searched were Medline, Embase and PsycInfo. The literature search yielded 167 articles, of which 19 were included in this review. The studies were published between 2005 and 2013 across nine countries. Thirteen different generic and disease-specific measures were used, the most common being the Pediatric Quality of Life 4.0 Generic Core module. HRQOL in boys with DMD is worse than that of healthy peers and children with other chronic illnesses, especially in the physical domains. Boys who are at a more severe stage of the disease reported worse physical HRQOL but not necessarily psychosocial HRQOL than boys at a less severe stage. Traditional clinical outcome measures correlated well only with physical HRQOL. Parents’ proxy-reports of their sons’ HRQOL and the boys’ self-reports had poor concordance. More research is needed to assess trends in HRQOL over time and to elucidate factors that affect HRQOL.