Health-related quality of life in the UK Biobank Experience of Pain follow-up study: a comparison with general population norms

The UK Biobank (UKB) is a population-based resource of genetic, health, lifestyle, sociodemographic, and linked clinical data for approximately 500 000 volunteers. Previous analyses of health determinants have shown that the UKB is not representative of the population from which it is drawn. However, representativeness from a general health-outcomes perspective is unknown, but could be assessed using health-related quality of life (HRQoL) questionnaire responses and expected population norms. The HRQoL responses, collected using the EuroQoL EQ-5D-5L instrument, were available for participants who completed the experience of pain follow-up survey (n = 167 199). We comprehensively characterized follow-up participant HRQoL and made age and sex-specific comparisons with normative data derived from the nationally representative Health Survey for England (2014). The pattern of reported problems mirrored those of the expected population norms, but with differences in magnitude: for both sexes, at all ages (except >74 years) the prevalence/odds of problems were greater for UKB participants. Compared with the norms, HRQoL of participants in this subsample did not follow a pattern of decline as expected with increasing age. While we did find differences in patterns between the EoPQ cohort and expected population HRQoL, the absolute differences were only modest, and this should provide reassurance for users of the data.