Compared with medication alone, Dr. O'Kearney and colleagues found that the efficacy of behavioral therapy was:
- Equivalent to that of Anafranil (weighted mean difference -8.50, 95% CI -17.44 to 0.44), and
- Not significantly different from Zoloft (weighted mean difference -2.50, 95% CI -7.37 to 2.37).
The studies also consistently found no difference in the number of participants who remained disordered after treatment between behavioral therapy and medication alone. The findings were:
- Behavioral therapy alone and medication alone had equivalent proportions continuing to have symptoms after treatment in the pooled analysis (RR 0.75, 95% CI 0.54 to 1.05),
- There was no difference between Anafranil and behavioral therapy (RR 0.69; 95% CI 0.30 to 1.61), and
- There was no difference between Zoloft and behavioral therapy (RR 0.77, 95% CI 0.54 to 1.10).
The combination of behavioral therapy and medication was superior to Luvox alone in symptom improvement (weighted mean difference -4.55, 95% CI -7.40 to -1.70). The combination with Zoloft was:
