Interventions:
The intervention and comparators were described, but it was not clear if any other relevant comparators were omitted.
Effectiveness/benefits:
The effectiveness data were from one clinical study, described as a trial, which is likely to have been well designed, but the exact design, methods and inclusion and exclusion criteria were not fully described; so its validity cannot be assessed. It was not clear whether the authors had searched the literature for other relevant sources of data, for the main analysis or for sensitivity analyses. The effectiveness of rosuvastatin was a clear driver of the model, and the estimate for this could have been better informed, using the literature. Methods used to elicit the utility values were not reported, and neither were the methods used to identify these estimates; it is unclear whether these estimates were from an appropriate population and elicited using appropriate methods.
Costs:
The cost categories were consistent with the stated perspective, but the cost of treating adverse events related to treatment was not considered. The sources for the costs appear to have been relevant to the study settings and the authors discounted the costs appropriately. The price year was not provided, which will hinder future reflation exercises. The long-term cost of rosuvastatin was estimated assuming a 95% reduction in its price within one year of generic products becoming available.
Analysis and results:
A full description of the model, with a diagram, was presented. Only the incremental results for the main analysis were presented, for rosuvastatin versus each comparator. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis was undertaken and the results were fully presented. The reporting was generally insufficient to allow a full assessment of validity to be undertaken, and this makes it difficult to assess how appropriate the conclusions were and the generalisability of the results. The authors discussed some of the key limitations of their study, which should be carefully considered.
Concluding remarks:
The lack of detailed reporting and the highlighted limitations mean that the authors’ conclusions should be considered with caution.