Meta-research metrics matter: letter regarding article 'indirect tolerability comparison of Deutetrabenazine and Tetrabenazine for Huntington disease'

© The Author(s). 2017 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.
Here we discuss the report by Claassen and colleagues describing an indirect treatment comparison between tetrabenazine and deutetrabenazine for chorea in Huntington's disease using individual patient data. We note the potential for discrepancies in apparently statistically significant findings, due to the rank reversal phenomenon. We provide some cautionary observations and suggestions concerning the limitations of indirect comparisons and the low likelihood that good quality evidence will become available to guide clinical decision comparing these two agents.