Efficacy and acceptability of next step treatment strategies in adults with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder: protocol for systematic review and network meta-analysis

Bibliographic Details
Title: Efficacy and acceptability of next step treatment strategies in adults with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder: protocol for systematic review and network meta-analysis
Authors: Toshi A Furukawa, Andrea Cipriani, Henricus G Ruhe, Jan Jacobus Muit, Philip F P van Eijndhoven, Iris Dalhuisen, Suzanne van Bronswijk
Source: BMJ Open, Vol 12, Iss 4 (2022)
Publisher Information: BMJ Publishing Group, 2022.
Publication Year: 2022
Collection: LCC:Medicine
Subject Terms: Medicine
More Details: Introduction For major depression, a one-size-fits-all treatment does not exist. Patients enter a ‘trial-and-change’ algorithm in which effective therapies are subsequently applied. Unfortunately, an empirically based order of treatments has not yet been determined. There is a magnitude of different treatment strategies while clinical trials only compare a small number of these. Network meta-analyses (NMA) might offer a solution, but so far have been limited in scope and did not account for possible differences in population characteristics that arise with increasing levels of treatment-resistance, potentially violating the transitivity assumption. We; therefore, present a protocol for a systematic review and NMA aiming at summarising and ranking treatments for treatment-resistant depression (TRD) while covering a broad range of therapeutic options and accounting for possible differences in population characteristics at increasing levels of treatment-resistance.Methods and analysis Randomised controlled trials will be included that compared next-step pharmacological, neuromodulation or psychological treatments for treatment-resistant depression (TRD; ie, failure to respond to ≥1 adequate antidepressant drug trial(s) in the current episode) to each other or to a control condition. Primary outcomes will be the proportion of patients who responded to (efficacy) and dropped out of (acceptability) the allocated treatment. A random effects NMA will be conducted, synthesising the evidence for each outcome and determining the differential efficacy of treatments. Heterogeneity in treatment nodes will be reduced by considering alternative geometries of the network structure and by conducting a meta-regression examining different levels of TRD. Local and global methods will be applied to evaluate consistency. The Cochrane Risk of Bias 2 tool, Confidence in Network Meta-Analysis and the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) framework will be used to assess risk of bias and certainty.Ethics and dissemination This review does not require ethical approval.
Document Type: article
File Description: electronic resource
Language: English
ISSN: 2044-6055
Relation: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/12/4/e056777.full; https://doaj.org/toc/2044-6055
DOI: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-056777
Access URL: https://doaj.org/article/bf0bcb967dfb4d249fc265cab3d6ffc9
Accession Number: edsdoj.bf0bcb967dfb4d249fc265cab3d6ffc9
Database: Directory of Open Access Journals
More Details
ISSN:20446055
DOI:10.1136/bmjopen-2021-056777
Published in:BMJ Open
Language:English