TY - JOUR
T1 - Accounting for behavior in treatment effects
T2 - New applications for blind trials
AU - Chassang, Sylvain
AU - Snowberg, Erik
AU - Seymour, Ben
AU - Bowles, Cayley
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Chassang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2015/6/10
Y1 - 2015/6/10
N2 - The double-blind randomized controlled trial (DBRCT) is the gold standard of medical research. We show that DBRCTs fail to fully account for the efficacy of treatment if there are interactions between treatment and behavior, for example, if a treatment is more effective when patients change their exercise or diet. Since behavioral or placebo effects depend on patients' beliefs that they are receiving treatment, clinical trials with a single probability of treatment are poorly suited to estimate the additional treatment benefit that arises from such interactions. Here, we propose methods to identify interaction effects, and use those methods in a meta-analysis of data from blinded anti-depressant trials in which participant-level data was available. Out of six eligible studies, which included three for the selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor paroxetine, and three for the tricyclic imipramine, three studies had a high (>65%) probability of treatment. We found strong evidence that treatment probability affected the behavior of trial participants, specifically the decision to drop out of a trial. In the case of paroxetine, but not imipramine, there was an interaction between treatment and behavioral changes that enhanced the effectiveness of the drug. These data show that standard blind trials can fail to account for the full value added when there are interactions between a treatment and behavior. We therefore suggest that a new trial design, two-bytwo blind trials, will better account for treatment efficacy when interaction effects may be important.
AB - The double-blind randomized controlled trial (DBRCT) is the gold standard of medical research. We show that DBRCTs fail to fully account for the efficacy of treatment if there are interactions between treatment and behavior, for example, if a treatment is more effective when patients change their exercise or diet. Since behavioral or placebo effects depend on patients' beliefs that they are receiving treatment, clinical trials with a single probability of treatment are poorly suited to estimate the additional treatment benefit that arises from such interactions. Here, we propose methods to identify interaction effects, and use those methods in a meta-analysis of data from blinded anti-depressant trials in which participant-level data was available. Out of six eligible studies, which included three for the selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor paroxetine, and three for the tricyclic imipramine, three studies had a high (>65%) probability of treatment. We found strong evidence that treatment probability affected the behavior of trial participants, specifically the decision to drop out of a trial. In the case of paroxetine, but not imipramine, there was an interaction between treatment and behavioral changes that enhanced the effectiveness of the drug. These data show that standard blind trials can fail to account for the full value added when there are interactions between a treatment and behavior. We therefore suggest that a new trial design, two-bytwo blind trials, will better account for treatment efficacy when interaction effects may be important.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0127227
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0127227
M3 - Article
C2 - 26062024
AN - SCOPUS:84936818619
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 10
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 6
M1 - e0127227
ER -