ArticleEvidence-based mental health2018
Is placebo response in antidepressant trials rising or not? A reanalysis of datasets to conclude this long-lasting controversy.
Article in Evidence-based mental health, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 8 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 8 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Placebo and nocebo effects of pharmacotherapy for obsessive-compulsive related disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Acta neuropsychiatrica · 2026Pooled it
- Is Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Relevant for Antidepressant Drug Therapy? Implications From a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis With Focus on Moderating Factors.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Pooled it
- Magnitude of the Placebo Response Across Treatment Modalities Used for Treatment-Resistant Depression in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.JAMA network open · 2021Pooled it
- A systematic review and combined meta-analysis of concentration of oral amisulpride.British journal of clinical pharmacology · 2020Pooled it
- Raising Placebo Efficacy in Antidepressant Trials Across Decades Explained by Small-Study Effects: A Meta-Reanalysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2020Pooled it
- Guidelines for the pharmacological acute treatment of major depression: conflicts with current evidence as demonstrated with the German S3-guidelines.BMC psychiatry · 2019Pooled it
- Neuropathic pain clinical trials: factors associated with decreases in estimated drug efficacy.Pain · 2018Pooled it
- Impact of placebo arms on outcomes in antidepressant trials: systematic review and meta-regression analysis.International journal of epidemiology · 2018Pooled it
- When does the placebo effect have an impact on network meta-analysis results?BMJ evidence-based medicine · 2024Article
- Visualizing the evolution of evidence: Cumulative network meta-analyses of new generation antidepressants in the last 40 years.Research synthesis methods · 2021Article
- Comparative efficacy of placebos in short-term antidepressant trials for major depression: a secondary meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials.BMC psychiatry · 2020Article
- Placebo Responses and Placebo Effects in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2020Review
- Power behind the throne: A clinical trial simulation study evaluating the impact of controllable design factors on the power of antidepressant trials.International journal of methods in psychiatric research · 2019Article
- Barriers and incentives to recruitment in mental health clinical trials.Evidence-based mental health · 2019Article
- Development and validation of a prediction model for the probability of responding to placebo in antidepressant trials: a pooled analysis of individual patient data.Evidence-based mental health · 2019Article
- The evidence-based group-level symptom-reduction model as the organizing principle for mental health care: time for change?World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2019Article
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9 authors.
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Abstract
It had long been believed that placebo response rates in antidepressant trials have been increasing and that they were responsible for rising numbers of so-called failed antidepressant trials. Two recent systematic reviews examined this issue and reached completely opposite findings. Furukawa and colleagues in a paper published in 2016 found that the placebo response rates are stable since 1991 and the apparent increase up to 2000 was confounded by changes in trial design features. By contrast, Khan and colleagues more recently concluded that placebo response rates had grown steadily in the past 30 years. The two reviews differed in the datasets they used, definitions of placebo response and statistical analyses. In this perspective article, we examined if such differences were responsible for the two reviews' contrasting conclusions. Our reanalyses confirmed our previous results. We found that in any dataset and for any placebo response definition, there was no increase in placebo response over the years when the analysis was adjusted for the confounders related to study design features or when it was limited to studies published after 1990s. We conclude that placebo response in antidepressant trials has remained stable for the past 25 years, during which time the large majority of the studies have come to share similar design features.
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