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Background: In the UK and in Sweden, cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) has been recommended for schizophrenia. The two recent meta-analyses examined results soon after treatment and not at follow-up. Aim: To determine the effectiveness of CBT in people with schizophrenia, both after treatment and at follow-up, and to compare it with treatment as usual (TAU) and other psychological treatments. Methods: The search was carried in the databases CENTRAL (Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials), PsycINFO and PubMed (Medline). Inclusion criteria were randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with low risk of bias. Two reviewers, working independently, extracted data. The results were analyzed using risk ratio (RR), risk difference (RD), mean difference (MD), or standardized mean difference (SMD). Outcome measures were symptoms, use of medication, relapse and clinically important improvement. Results: When CBT was compared with other psychological treatments at follow-up, there was strong evidence (with small treatment effect) that intervention has an effect with positive symptoms ( P == 0.02), negative symptoms ( P == 0.03) and general symptoms ( P == 0.003). After treatment, there was a trend in favor of CBT, but not statistically significantly so. Conclusion: It appears that the effect of CBT is delayed; it could be seen a few months after the treatment had terminated. Therapies for patients with schizophrenia that were 20 sessions long or more had better outcomes than those that were shorter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

History-indicated cervical cerclage is offered to patients who are at risk of spontaneous preterm birth (SPTB), though the indications are controversial. A common practice of offering cerclage after three prior SPTBs or midtrimester losses (MTLs) is based on findings of the subgroup analysis of the 1993 Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) randomized trial of cervical cerclage. The subgroup analysis was performed by repeating the primary analysis within individual subgroups, which can lead to erroneous conclusions. We repeated the subgroup analysis by evaluating the interaction between the characteristic of interest and treatment allocation in a regression model. The interaction between cerclage and any prior PTB as a binary variable was non-significant. Among subjects delivering at <37 weeks, there was a significant interaction between cerclage and prior PTBs as a continuous variable or ≥ 3 ( p-values 0.04 and 0.03, respectively). There were no significant interactions between cerclage and the aforementioned outcomes among women who delivered at <33 weeks, though this may have been secondary to a smaller number of SPTB in this range. Our findings lend credence to the current recommendations regarding the use of history-indicated cerclage, though they remain subject to the inherent limitations of subgroup analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]