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Research reports on treatments for bipolar disorder: preliminary assessment of methodological quality
Author(s) -
Soldani F.,
Ghaemi S. N.,
Baldessarini R. J.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
acta psychiatrica scandinavica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.849
H-Index - 146
eISSN - 1600-0447
pISSN - 0001-690X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0447.2005.00575.x
Subject(s) - psychopathology , randomized controlled trial , bipolar disorder , clinical psychology , psychology , psychiatry , confidence interval , dropout (neural networks) , pharmacotherapy , meta analysis , medicine , medline , mood , machine learning , computer science , political science , law
Objective: To assess frequencies of types of publications about bipolar disorder (BD) and evaluate methodological quality of treatment studies. Method: We classified 100 randomly selected articles (1998–2002) from five psychiatric journals with highest impact ratings, by topic areas, and assessed methods employed in treatment studies. Results: Topics ranked: treatment (41%; 37% on pharmacotherapy) > biology (31%) > psychopathology (14%) = miscellaneous (14%). Of treatment studies, only 19% of original articles were randomized, 15% were relatively large ( n ≥ 50) but non‐randomized, 65% were small non‐randomized, case‐series or ‐reports, and 53% relied on baseline‐to‐endpoint contrasts without a control group. Patient dropout rates were ≥40% in 43% of prospective studies. Only two reports provided confidence intervals; one included a power analysis, and 53% included no references on study design or statistical methods. Conclusion: Even in highly respected journals, the typical methodological quality of recent reports on therapeutics for BD was unexpectedly limited, and psychopathology and psychotherapies were little studied.