Methods of Blinding in Reports of Randomized Controlled Trials Assessing Pharmacologic Treatments: A Systematic Review

Background: Blinding is a cornerstone of therapeutic evaluation because lack of blinding can bias treatment effect estimates. An inventory of the blinding methods would help trialists conduct high-quality clinical trials and readers appraise the quality of results of published trials. We aimed to systematically classify and describe methods to establish and maintain blinding of patients and health care providers and methods to obtain blinding of outcome assessors in randomized controlled trials of pharmacologic treatments. Methods and Findings: We undertook a systematic review of all reports of randomized controlled trials assessing pharmacologic treatments with blinding published in 2004 in high impact-factor journals from Medline and the Cochrane Methodology Register. We used a standardized data collection form to extract data. The blinding methods were classified according to whether they primarily (1) established blinding of patients or health care providers, (2) maintained the blinding of patients or health care providers, and (3) obtained blinding of assessors of the main outcomes. We identified 819 articles, with 472 (58%) describing the method of blinding. Methods to establish blinding of patients and/or health care providers concerned mainly treatments provided in identical form, specific methods to mask some characteristics of the treatments (e.g., added flavor or opaque coverage), or use of double dummy procedures or simulation of an injection. Methods to avoid unblinding of patients and/or health care providers involved use of active placebo, centralized assessment of side effects, patients informed only in part about the potential side effects of each treatment, centralized adapted dosage, or provision of sham results of complementary investigations. The methods reported for blinding outcome assessors mainly relied on a centralized assessment of complementary investigations, clinical examination (i.e., use of video, audiotape, or photography), or adjudication of clinical events. Conclusions: This review classifies blinding methods and provides a detailed description of methods that could help trialists overcome some barriers to blinding in clinical trials and readers interpret the quality of pharmalogic trials. Following a systematic review of all reports of randomized controlled trials assessing pharmacologic treatments involving blinding, a classification of blinding methods is proposed. Background.: In evidence-based medicine, good-quality randomized controlled trials are generally considered to be the most reliable source of information about the effects of different treatments, such as drugs. In a randomized trial, patients are assigned to receive one treatment or another by the play of chance. This technique helps makes sure that the two groups of patients receiving the different treatments are equivalent at the start of the trial. Proper randomization also prevents doctors from controlling or affecting which treatment patients get, which could distort the results. An additional tool that is also used to make trials more precise is “blinding.” Blinding involves taking steps to prevent patients, doctors, or other people involved in the trial (e.g., those people recording measurements) from finding out which patients got what treatment. Properly done, blinding should make sure the results of a trial are more accurate. This is because in an unblinded study, participants may respond better if they know they have received a promising new treatment (or worse if they only got placebo or an old drug); doctors may “want” a particular treatment to do better in the trial, and unthinking bias could creep into their measurements or actions; the same applies for practitioners and researchers who record patients' outcomes in the trial. However, blinding is not a simple, single step; the people carrying out the trial often have to set up a variety of different procedures that depend on the type of trial that is being done. Why Was This Study Done?: The researchers here wanted to thoroughly examine different methods that have been used to achieve blinding in randomized trials of drug treatments, and to describe and classify them. They hoped that a better understanding of the different blinding methods would help people doing trials to design better trials in the future, and also help readers to interpret the quality of trials that had been done. What Did the Researchers Do and Find?: This group of researchers conducted what is called a “systematic review.” They systematically searched the published medical literature to find all randomized, blinded drug trials published in 2004 in a number of different “high-impact” journals (journals whose articles are often mentioned in other articles). Then, the researchers classified information from the published trial reports. The researchers ended up with 819 trial reports, and nearly 60% of them described how blinding was done. Their classification of blinding was divided up into three main areas. First, they detailed methods used to hide which drugs are given to particular patients, such as preparing identically appearing treatments; using strong flavors to mask taste; matching the colors of pills; using saline injections and so on. Second, they described a number of methods that could be used to reduce the risk of unblinding (of doctors or patients), such as using an “active placebo” (a sugar pill that mimics some of the expected side effects of the drug treatment). Finally, they defined methods for blinded measurement of outcomes (such as using a central committee to collect data). What Do These Findings Mean?: The researchers' classification will help people to work out how different techniques can be used to achieve, and keep, blinding in a trial. This will assist others to understand whether any particular trial was likely to have been blinded properly, and therefore work out whether the results are reliable. The researchers also suggest that, generally, blinding methods are not described in enough detail in published scientific papers, and recommend that guidelines for describing results of randomized trials be improved. Additional Information.: Please access these Web sites via the online version of this summary at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030425.