The Promise and Challenges of Using Combined Moderator Methods to Personalize Mental Health Treatment

Personalized medicine approaches depend on identifying moderators. In a randomized clinical trial (RCT), a moderator is a pre-treatment characteristic that provides information about who is likely to have a favorable outcome with which treatment. (In contrast, a non-specific predictor is a pre-treatment characteristic that provides information about who is likely to have a favorable outcome, regardless of treatment.) To illustrate, a recent RCT found that set-shifting performance moderated the effect of aripirazole (versus placebo) on remission in older adults with venlafaxine-resistant major depression (1).
Source: The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry - Category: Geriatrics Authors: Tags: Invited Perspective Source Type: research