Cost comparison of asthma treatments in 12-week study: caution about matching and short observational follow-up

David B. Price; Job F. M.  van Boven; Lisa M. Law; Alessandra Cifra; R Brett McQueen

doi:10.1186/s40248-016-0076-x

Cost comparison of asthma treatments in 12-week study: caution about matching and short observational follow-up

David B. Price, Job F. M. van Boven, Lisa M. Law, Alessandra Cifra, R Brett McQueen

University of Groningen

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Abstract

In the absence of randomisation, observational studies must take extra care to create treatment groups that are comparable in terms of key characteristics. Various matching methods exist which can create sound comparisons, minimising confounding where possible. A recent observational study by Dal Negro et al. carried out a cost analysis comparing two asthma medications. They report strong conclusions which favour one treatment over the other, however they include little discussion on the limitations of their study. The purpose of this letter is to comment on the weaknesses of the study design, including the level of matching used, and to urge readers to consider these issues alongside the interpretation of results.

Original language	English
Article number	39
Journal	Multidisciplinary respiratory medicine
Volume	11
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1186/s40248-016-0076-x
Publication status	Published - 2 Nov 2016

Bibliographical note

This review was funded by Observational and Pragmatic Research Institute Pte Ltd.

Keywords

matched cohort
observational
asthma outcomes

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10.1186/s40248-016-0076-xLicence: CC BY

Cost comparison of asthma treatments in 12-week study: caution about matching and short observational follow-up
© 2016 The Author(s). Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Final published version, 349 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Cost comparison of asthma treatments in 12-week study: caution about matching and short observational follow-up",

abstract = "In the absence of randomisation, observational studies must take extra care to create treatment groups that are comparable in terms of key characteristics. Various matching methods exist which can create sound comparisons, minimising confounding where possible. A recent observational study by Dal Negro et al. carried out a cost analysis comparing two asthma medications. They report strong conclusions which favour one treatment over the other, however they include little discussion on the limitations of their study. The purpose of this letter is to comment on the weaknesses of the study design, including the level of matching used, and to urge readers to consider these issues alongside the interpretation of results.",

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AU - Price, David B.

AU - van Boven, Job F. M.

AU - Law, Lisa M.

AU - Cifra, Alessandra

AU - McQueen, R Brett

N1 - This review was funded by Observational and Pragmatic Research Institute Pte Ltd.

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Y1 - 2016/11/2

N2 - In the absence of randomisation, observational studies must take extra care to create treatment groups that are comparable in terms of key characteristics. Various matching methods exist which can create sound comparisons, minimising confounding where possible. A recent observational study by Dal Negro et al. carried out a cost analysis comparing two asthma medications. They report strong conclusions which favour one treatment over the other, however they include little discussion on the limitations of their study. The purpose of this letter is to comment on the weaknesses of the study design, including the level of matching used, and to urge readers to consider these issues alongside the interpretation of results.

AB - In the absence of randomisation, observational studies must take extra care to create treatment groups that are comparable in terms of key characteristics. Various matching methods exist which can create sound comparisons, minimising confounding where possible. A recent observational study by Dal Negro et al. carried out a cost analysis comparing two asthma medications. They report strong conclusions which favour one treatment over the other, however they include little discussion on the limitations of their study. The purpose of this letter is to comment on the weaknesses of the study design, including the level of matching used, and to urge readers to consider these issues alongside the interpretation of results.

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KW - asthma outcomes

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ER -

Cost comparison of asthma treatments in 12-week study: caution about matching and short observational follow-up

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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