Carers' Health-Related Quality of Life in Global Health Technology Assessment: Guidance, Case Studies and Recommendations.

Including health outcomes for carers as well as patients in economic evaluations can change the results and conclusions of the analysis. Whilst in many disease areas there can be clear justification for including carers' health-related quality of life (HRQL) in health technology assessments (HTAs), we believe that, in general, the perspective of carers is under-represented in HTA. We were interested in the extent, and methods by which, HTA bodies include carers' HRQL in economic evaluation.

Competition between antagonistic complement factors for a single protein on N. meningitidis rules disease susceptibility.

Genome-wide association studies have found variation within the complement factor H gene family links to host susceptibility to meningococcal disease caused by infection with Neisseria meningitidis (Davila et al., 2010). Mechanistic insights have been challenging since variation within this locus is complex and biological roles of the factor H-related proteins, unlike factor H, are incompletely understood.