Trial reportPsychotherapy and psychosomatics2018
A Novel Strategy to Identify Placebo Responders: Prediction Index of Clinical and Biological Markers in the EMBARC Trial.
Trial report in Psychotherapy and psychosomatics, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT01407094 (Establishing Moderators and Biosignatures of Antidepressant Response for Clinical Care), which is not on this map. Cited by 25 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Establishing Moderators and Biosignatures of Antidepressant Response for Clinical Care (EMBARC) for Depression
Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 48 citations in OpenAlex.
- Transient frontal spectral events from EEG predict antidepressant response to sertraline in depression.Journal of psychiatric research · 2026Trial
- Towards causal inference-based antidepressant selection with brain and blood biomarkers.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Trial
- Individual differences in dopamine-related traits influence mood effects of dopamine D2-antagonist and antidepressant treatment expectations.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Trial
- Accelerated Brain Aging in Adults With Major Depressive Disorder Predicts Poorer Outcome With Sertraline: Findings From the EMBARC Study.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2023Trial
- Cross-Sectional Associations Among Symptoms of Pain, Irritability, and Depression and How These Symptoms Relate to Social Functioning and Quality of Life: Findings From the EMBARC and STRIDE Studies and the VitalSign6 Project.The Journal of clinical psychiatry · 2021Trial
- Association between irritability and suicidal ideation in three clinical trials of adults with major depressive disorder.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2020Trial
- Improvements in irritability with sertraline versus placebo: Findings from the EMBARC study.Journal of affective disorders · 2020Trial
- Dose increase of S-Adenosyl-Methionine and escitalopram in a randomized clinical trial for major depressive disorder.Journal of affective disorders · 2020Trial
- Brain rhythms of depression: A predictive processing perspective.Trends in neurosciences · 2026Review
- Transient frontal spectral events from EEG predict antidepressant response to sertraline in depression.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Application of the research domain criteria in early-phase clinical development of transdiagnostic neurotherapeutics: A multidisciplinary perspective.Neuroscience applied · 2026Review
- Predicting Placebo Responses Using EEG and Deep Convolutional Neural Networks: Correlations with Clinical Data Across Three Independent Datasets.Neuroinformatics · 2025Article
- Possible Strategies to Mitigate Placebo or Vehicle Response in Dry Eye Disease Trials: A Narrative Review.Ophthalmology and therapy · 2023Review
- Data driven clusters derived from resting state functional connectivity: Findings from the EMBARC study.Journal of psychiatric research · 2023Article
- Selective Orexin Receptor Antagonists as Novel Augmentation Treatments for Major Depressive Disorder: Evidence for Safety and Efficacy From a Phase 2B Study of Seltorexant.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Article
- Spotlight on Pimavanserin Tartrate and Its Therapeutic Potential in the Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder: The Evidence to Date.Drug design, development and therapy · 2021Review
- Selective kappa-opioid antagonism ameliorates anhedonic behavior: evidence from the Fast-fail Trial in Mood and Anxiety Spectrum Disorders (FAST-MAS).Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2020Article
- Psychometric Properties of the Concise Associated Symptom Tracking Scale and Validation of Clinical Utility in the EMBARC Study.Psychiatric research and clinical practice · 2020Article
- Higher S100B Levels Predict Persistently Elevated Anhedonia with Escitalopram Monotherapy Versus Antidepressant Combinations: Findings from CO-MED Trial.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
- Neural Predictors of the Antidepressant Placebo Response.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
19 authors at 9 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundOne in three clinical trial patients with major depressive disorder report symptomatic improvement with placebo. Strategies to mitigate the effect of placebo responses have focused on modifying study design with variable success. Identifying and excluding or controlling for individuals with a high likelihood of responding to placebo may improve clinical trial efficiency and avoid unnecessary medication trials.
methodsParticipants included those assigned to the placebo arm (n = 141) of the Establishing Moderators and Biosignatures for Antidepressant Response in Clinical Care (EMBARC) trial. The elastic net was used to evaluate 283 baseline clinical, behavioral, imaging, and electrophysiological variables to identify the most robust yet parsimonious features that predicted depression severity at the end of the double-blind 8-week trial. Variables retained in at least 50% of the 100 imputed data sets were used in a Bayesian multiple linear regression model to simultaneously predict the probabilities of response and remission.
resultsLower baseline depression severity, younger age, absence of melancholic features or history of physical abuse, less anxious arousal, less anhedonia, less neuroticism, and higher average theta current density in the rostral anterior cingulate predicted a higher likelihood of improvement with placebo. The Bayesian model predicted remission and response with an actionable degree of accuracy (both AUC > 0.73). An interactive calculator was developed predicting the likelihood of placebo response at the individual level.
conclusionEasy-to-measure clinical, behavioral, and electrophysiological assessments can be used to identify placebo responders with a high degree of accuracy. Development of this calculator based on these findings can be used to identify potential placebo responders.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.