OBJECTIVES To provide an accurate estimation of the magnitude of effect of lithium in short-term efficacy studies conducted in patients with moderate to severe manic episode. METHODS All placebo-controlled randomized studies submitted to the Medicines Evaluation Board (MEB) in which lithium was used as the third study arm were selected for the meta-analysis. The studies were part of registrat...

BACKGROUND Reporting numbers needed to treat (NNT) improves interpretability of trial results. It is unusual that continuous outcomes are converted to numbers of individual responders to treatment (i.e., those who reach a particular threshold of change); and deteriorations prevented are only rarely considered. We consider how numbers needed to treat can be derived from continuous outcomes; illu...