INTRODUCTION
Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards (CHEERS) guidelines are for reporting of economic evaluation of health interventions.[1] Enhancing the Quality and Transparency Of health Research Network (EQUATOR) works toward formulating various guidelines for standardized, transparent, and good-quality reporting of different types of research studies. The CHEERS 2022 statement is a 28-item checklist that replaces the previous version of CHEERS 2013 guidelines (24-item checklist) issued by the EQUATOR Network as an attempt to consolidate, update, and make it a useful reporting guidance.[2,3] This study planned to evaluate the adherence of published pharmacoeconomic studies to CHEERS guidelines.
METHODS
After exemption from ethics review (ECARP/2022/167), an electronic search for free full-text articles was performed on the PubMed database with keywords “Pharmacoeconomic study” OR “Pharmacoeconomic analysis” from October 12, 2021, to October 12, 2022, using customized filters. After excluding nonhealth intervention studies, behavioral, diagnostic, surgical medical devices interventions, study protocols, commentaries, and noninterventional reviews, only n = 64 pharmacoeconomic (drug intervention) studies were found eligible for final analysis. The study evaluated the adherence of pharmacoeconomic studies to CHEERS 2013 or 2022 guidelines and its association of the nature of the journal (health economic/nonhealth economic) along with qualitative assessment.
RESULTS
Of the total n = 64 pharmacoeconomic free full-text studies available, the majority of them, i.e., 73.43% (47/64) studies were published in nonhealth economic, and only 26.56% (17/64) studies were published in health economic journals. Pharmacoeconomic studies published in pharmacology (7/64, 10.9%) and pharmaceutical (1/64, 1.5%) journals were considered under nonhealth economic journals for our study. Interventions in these pharmacoeconomic studies were drugs (50/64, 78.13%), monoclonal antibodies (11/64, 17.18%), and vaccines and immunoglobulins (3/64, 4.68%). The analysis revealed that of the 64 pharmacoeconomic studies published, only 11/64 studies (17.18%) adhered to the CHEERS statement as mentioned clearly in their publication. Of these 11 published pharmacoeconomic studies adherent to CHEERS, only 2 (18.18%) adhered to the updated CHEERS 2022 statement. Of the 17/64 pharmacoeconomic studies published in health economics journals, 3/17 (27.2%) adhered to CHEERS 2013 guidelines and none adhered to CHEERS 2022 guidelines. Of the 47/64 pharmacoeconomic studies published in nonhealth economic journals, only 8/47 (17%) adhered to the CHEERS 2013 (5) or 2022 (3) guidelines but this adherence was not significant relative to the nature of the journal (P = 0.95).On qualitatively analyzing the 11 adherent PE studies, all published in 2022, only 2/11 studies followed the updated CHEERS 2022 statement, however, these studies missed to report the distributional effects and impact of patient engagement in the study.
DISCUSSION
The CHEERS 2013 statement was created to ensure that health economic evaluations are identifiable, interpretable, and useful for decision-making. However, it did not provide reporting guidance for cost–benefit analysis.[3] CHEERS 2022 updated guidelines recognized by the EQUATOR Network and ISPOR reflect the recent developments in economic evaluation methods and replace the original 2013 CHEERS guidance.[3] The 2022 update makes provisions for cost–benefit analysis and adds focus to patient engagement methods and their impact on outcomes, characterization of equity, and distributional effects. However, it does not cover guidelines for Budget Impact Analysis studies for which separate guidelines are to be followed.[4] A study by El Alili ME et al. revealed 30% adherence to reporting as per CHEERS for cost-effectiveness studies (n = 45) in Obstetrics and Gynecology journals.[5] A systematic review by Algarni et al. identified poor quality reporting based on the CHEERS checklists in n = 7 cost-effective analyses.[6] Authors, peer reviewers, and journal editors need to adhere to the CHEERS updated statement as part of publication ethics, thereby preventing inappropriate conclusions/health-care decisions based on biased results.
Ethics approval
The study is exempted from ethics review (ECARP/2022/167).
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
REFERENCES
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