Journal of psychosomatic research
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The most reliable evidence for evaluating healthcare interventions comes from well-designed and conducted randomized controlled trials (RCTs). The extent to which published RCTs reflect the efficacy of interventions, however, depends on the completeness and accuracy of published results. The Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials statement, initially developed in 1996, provides guidelines intended to improve the transparency of published RCT reports. A policy of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, initiated in 2005, requires clinical trials published in member journals to be registered in publicly accessible registries prior to patient enrollment. The objective of this study was to assess the clarity of outcome reporting, proportion of registered trials, and adequacy of outcome registration in RCTs published in top behavioral health journals. ⋯ Greater attention to outcome reporting and trial registration by researchers, peer reviewers, and journal editors will increase the likelihood that effective behavioral health interventions are readily identified and made available to patients.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Intervening on cognitions and behavior in irritable bowel syndrome: A feasibility trial using PDAs.
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common, chronic, and often disabling disorder. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) has been shown to be effective in alleviating IBS symptoms. The aim of this study was to establish the feasibility and the efficacy of a cognitive-behavioral e-intervention using personal digital assistants (PDAs) on the self-management of IBS patients. ⋯ A cognitive-behavioral intervention on pocket-type computers appears feasible and efficacious for improving IBS-related complaints and cognitions in the short-term. The intervention group improved on several aspects, but most on catastrophizing thoughts, and these improvements even persisted after 3 months. Future studies should focus on unravelling the effective components of this innovative e-health intervention.
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The present study examines the possibility that a chronic pain condition, such as fibromyalgia, was associated with deficits in decision making and associative learning. ⋯ These findings indicate that pain and depressive symptoms in fibromyalgia might lead to significant deficits in emotionally charged cognitive tasks. Furthermore, it suggests that chronic pain might impose a high cost on executive control, undermining mainly affective processes involved in learning, memory, attention, and decision-making.
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Medically unexplained symptoms (MUSs) are a humanitarian and economic burden. Among them, pain complaints without organic pathology are the most prevalent. Theoretically, activated illness-related memory may cause reporting of symptoms by changing perception and interpretation of bodily signals to the extent that they are not tolerated and become complaints. We tested whether activating illness-related memory without conscious awareness leads to decreased pain tolerance (PT). ⋯ The findings suggest that PT can be involuntarily decreased by activating illness-related memory. This implies partial evidence for a crucial element of a cognitive model of medically unexplained symptoms, which holds that chronically activated illness-related memory causes the development of somatic complaints without observable bodily pathology.