Pharmacoeconomic analysis aims to identify and measure all costs and all outcomes associated with providing a pharmaceutical product or service. In order to accomplish this several economic study techniques have been used in the pharmacoeconomic literature in various disease areas. OBJECTIVES: To determine if there is a relationship between the type of study (e.g. cost-effectiveness (CEA), cost-benefit (CBA), cost-minimisation (CMA), cost-utility analysis (CUA)) used in a pharmacoeconomic analysis and the disease area being investigated. METHODS: Five disease areas, as categorised by the British National Formulary 1 were investigated. A broad literature search, using MESH terms, was performed using Medline (PubMed) and abstracts that included full and partial pharmacoeconomic analyses, from 1966 until the present day, were considered for review. RESULTS: 119 abstracts were found. No cost-benefit analyses were found and the most commonly used full economic techniques were cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analysis; whilst cost analysis was the most commonly used partial analytic technique. CEA was the preponderant technique employed in the cardiovascular, respiratory and central nervous system disease areas, with contributions of 50% (24/48), 43.48% (10/28) and 45.45% (5/11) respectively. CUA was preponderant in the endocrinal disease area, 30.77% (4/13), whilst CEA and CUA were equally employed in the area of gastrointestinal disease, 33.33% (8/24) and 25.00% (6/24) respectively. Cost-analysis did not dominate any disease area, and was not found to be preponderant in any specific disease area. CONCLUSION: Although this initial review found that CEA was the preponderant technique employed in the cardiovascular, respiratory and central nervous system disease areas and CUA in the endocrinal disease area, the relatively small number of papers reviewed cannot allow one to draw conclusions regarding definite relationships between disease areas and the type of studies used. Further analysis of the pharmacoeconomic literature is required to investigate possible relationships further and highlight these where they occur.