Blinding successfulness in antipsychotic trials of acute treatment for schizophrenia: a systematic review

Correspondence to Dr Aran Tajika, Department of Health Promotion and Human Behavior, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine / School of Public Health, Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan; aran.tajika28@gmail.com Background Blinding of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) is very important for the accurate assessment of drug efficacy. Baethge et al searched for studies on schizophrenia and affective disorders from 2000 to 2010 to assess whether blinding was appropriately performed.3 Only 5 of the 672 schizophrenia studies, including those on pharmacotherapies and physical therapies, reported blinding assessment, and studies on schizophrenia tended to assess blindness less frequently than studies on affective disorders.3 Thus, of the many double-blind RCTs of antipsychotic drugs conducted to date in the field of schizophrenia, it is unclear how many studies in total have assessed the successfulness of their blinding and if they were successful. [...]the objectives of this study were to clarify: (1) the proportion of RCTs of antipsychotics for schizophrenia in which blinding was assessed and (2) the degree of their blinding successfulness. Study selection and analysis We searched for antipsychotic drug trials in two sources. The response of subgroups of patients with schizophrenia to different antipsychotic drugs: a systematic review and meta-analysis.