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Norio Watanabe

Publications and source records attributed to Norio Watanabe.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Imputing missing standard deviations in meta-analyses can provide accurate results.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Many reports of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) fail to provide standard deviations (SDs) of their continuous outcome measures. Some meta-analysts substitute them by those reported in other studies, either from another meta-analysis or from other studies in the same meta-analysis. But the validity of such practices has never been empirically examined. METHODS: We compared the actual standardized mean difference (SMD) of individual RCTs and the meta-analytically pooled SMD of all RCTs against those based on the above-mentioned two imputation methods in two meta-analyses of antidepressants. RESULTS: Two meta-analyses included 39 RCTs of fluoxetine (n = 3,681) and 25 RCTs of amitriptyline (n = 1,832), which had actually reported means and SDs of the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression. According to either of the two proposed imputation methods, the agreement between actual SMDs and imputed SMDs for individual RCTs was very good with ANOVA intraclass correlation coefficients between 0.61 and 0.97. The agreement between the actual pooled SMD and the imputed one was even better, with minimal differences in both their point estimates and 95% confidence intervals. CONCLUSION: For a systematic review where some of the identified trials do not report SDs, it appears safe to borrow SDs from other studies.

Amitriptyline↗
PubMed2006

Psychotherapy plus antidepressant for panic disorder with or without agoraphobia: systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Panic disorder can be treated with psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy or a combination of both. AIMS: To summarise the evidence concerning the short- and long-term benefits and adverse effects of a combination of psychotherapy and antidepressant treatment. METHOD: Meta-analyses and meta-regressions were undertaken using data from all relevant randomised controlled trials identified by a comprehensive literature search. The primary outcome was relative risk (RR) of response. RESULTS: We identified 23 randomised comparisons (21 trials involving a total of 1709 patients). In the acute-phase treatment, the combined therapy was superior to antidepressant pharmacotherapy (RR=1.24,95% CI1.02-1.52) or psychotherapy (RR=1.16,95% CI1.03-1.30). After termination of the acute-phase treatment, the combined therapy was more effective than pharmacotherapy alone (RR=1.61,95% CI1.23-2.11) and was as effective as psychotherapy (RR=0.96, 95% CI 0.79-1.16). CONCLUSIONS: Either combined therapy or psychotherapy alone may be chosen as first-line treatment for panic disorder with or without agoraphobia, depending on the patient's preferences.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Gradations of clinical severity and sensitivity to change assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory-II in Japanese patients with depression.

Knowledge of what constitutes a minimal clinically important difference and change on a psychiatric rating scale is essential in interpreting its scores. The present study examines the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), a recently revised successor to the world's most popular self-rating instrument for depression. BDI-II was administered to 85 patients with major depression, diagnosed with DSM-IV along with its severity specifiers. It was again administered to 40 first-visit patients from the original sample when they returned 14 or more days later. The Clinical Global Impression-Change Scale was rated at the same time. All the ratings were done independent of each other. The BDI-II was able to distinguish between all grades of depression severity. An approximate 10-point difference existed between each severity specifier. The BDI-II was also sensitive to change in depression: a 5-point difference corresponded to a minimally important clinical difference, 10-19 points to a moderate difference, and 20 or more points to a large difference. Given the already established high reliability, content validity, construct validity and factorial validity, and the high sensitivity to between-subject differences and within-subject changes demonstrated in the present study, the BDI-II promises to continue to be a leading self-rating instrument to assess depression severity worldwide.

Cohort Studies↗
PubMed2005

Imputing response rates from means and standard deviations in meta-analyses.

The principle of intention-to-treat analysis must be strictly applied to both individual randomized controlled trial and meta-analysis but, in doing so, would involve imputation of some missing data. There is little literature on how to perform this in the case of meta-analysis. For dichotomous outcome measures, one possible strategy is to carry out a sensitivity analysis based on the so-called best case/worst case analyses. For continuous outcomes, it may be possible to achieve this if we can dichotomise the continuous outcomes. Here, we empirically examined the appropriateness of converting continuous outcomes (expressed as mean+/-SD) into dichotomous outcomes (expressed as response rates) in four completed meta-analyses of depression and anxiety, assuming normal distribution of the continuous outcome measures. The agreement between the actually observed versus the imputed raw numbers of responders was indicated by an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.97 (95% confidence interval 0.95-0.98). The pooled relative risks of the four meta-analyses based on the imputed values were virtually identical to those based on the actually observed values. When individual trials report the means+/-SDs of their outcome measures but fail to report response rates, it may therefore be possible to impute the response rates based on the means+/-SDs, and then submit the meta-analysis to worst case/best case analyses. This would allow a more robust and clinically interpretable estimation of the true, underlying treatment effect to be made.

Data Interpretation, Statistical↗
PubMed2005

Quality of life and social role functioning in Japanese patients with panic disorder.

Although a number of recent studies have shown that panic disorder is associated with deterioration in quality of life and social dysfunctions, details of these impairments and their correlates have not been well studied. The present study aims to examine which aspects of quality of life and social functioning were particularly impaired in patients with panic disorder and to search for their clinical correlates. Fifty patients with panic disorder with or without agoraphobia who participated in our group cognitive-behavioral treatment program were administered the Medical Outcomes Study Short-Form Health Survey and the Work, Home and Leisure Activities Scale. Their panic disorder symptomatology was assessed with the Panic Disorder Severity Scale and Fear Questionnaire. Compared with the population mean, the patients reported less than average quality of life in both physical and mental domains, especially in the latter domain. They also reported substantial social dysfunctions, especially in work and social leisure activities. Different aspects of patients' psychopathology were associated with these impairments. While agoraphobia appeared as a consistent predictor for most of the aspects examined, social phobia emerged as a strong predictor for mental quality of life and for work and social leisure functions. The findings suggest that we need to remain sensitive to different aspects of functional impairments of patients with panic disorder and that we may need to pay more attention to the role of social anxiety in their treatment.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Cross-cultural evaluation of the Panic Disorder Severity Scale in Japan.

The Panic Disorder Severity Scale (PDSS) [Shear et al., 1997] is rapidly gaining world-wide acceptance as a standard global severity measure of panic disorder, however, its cross-cultural validity and reliability have not been reported yet. We developed the Japanese version of the PDSS and examined its factor structure, internal consistency and inter-rater reliability and concurrent validity among Japanese patients with panic disorder with or without agoraphobia. We also established rules of thumb for interpreting PDSS total scores, taking the Clinical Global Impression severity scale as the anchoring criterion. The identical one-factor structure of the PDSS was confirmed among the Japanese patients as among the United States patients. Both internal and inter-rater reliability was excellent (Cronbach's alpha was 0.86, and ANOVA ICCs were all above 0.90). Concurrent validity of the PDSS items with self-report questionnaires tapping similar or overlapping domains was satisfactory (Pearson correlation coefficients were mostly above 0.5). Using the anchor-based approach, the following interpretative guides are suggested: among those with established panic disorder diagnosis, PDSS total scores up to 10 correspond with "mild," those between 11 and 15 with "moderate," and those at or above 16 correspond with "severe" panic disorder. The present findings support the cross-cultural generalizability of panic disorder symptomatology and of the PDSS, in particular.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Zernike-type phase-contrast hard X-ray microscope with a zone plate at the Photon Factory.

A Zernike-type phase-contrast X-ray microscope with a zone plate and a phase plate was constructed at the Photon Factory BL3C2. Parallel monochromatic X-rays of 8.97 keV were incident on a specimen and a direct beam transmitted through the specimen was focused on the back focal plane of the zone plate, where an aluminium phase plate was placed. Tantalum line patterns as fine as 0.3 microm could be imaged. Phase-contrast images of polypropylene wires and polystyrene latex beads were obtained, which showed better contrast than that of their bright field images.

Journal Article↗