Treatment effect heterogeneity of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia – A meta-analysis

Investigation of the heterogeneity of the treatment effect (HTE) might guide the optimization of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I). This study examined HTE in CBT-I thereby analyzing if treatment setting, control group, different CBT-I components, and patient characteristics drive HTE. Randomized controlled trials investigating CBT-I were included. Bayesian random effect meta-regressions were specified to examine variances between the intervention and control groups regarding post-treatment symptom severity. Subgroup analyses analyzing treatment setting and control groups and covariate analysis analyzing treatment components and patient characteristics were specified. No significant HTE in CBT-I was found for the overall data set, settings and control groups. The covariate analyses yielded significant results for baseline severity and the treatment component relaxation therapy. Thus, this study identified potential causes for HTE in CBT-I for the first time, showing that it might be worthwhile to further examine possibilities for precision medicine in CBT-I.