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L-carnosine as an enhancer to computerized cognitive behaviour therapy in Japanese workers, an unjustified claim

This letter comments on the conclusion drawn by Shirotsuki et al. (2017) in their article entitled “The effect for Japanese workers of a self-help computerized cognitive behaviour therapy program with a supplement soft drink”, recently published in BioPsychoSocial Medicine. The authors concluded tha...

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Autores principales: Sauvé, Geneviève, Bastien, Marie-France, Roy-Gelencser, Casandra, El-Baalbaki, Ghassan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6122662/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30202430
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13030-018-0130-3
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author Sauvé, Geneviève
Bastien, Marie-France
Roy-Gelencser, Casandra
El-Baalbaki, Ghassan
author_facet Sauvé, Geneviève
Bastien, Marie-France
Roy-Gelencser, Casandra
El-Baalbaki, Ghassan
author_sort Sauvé, Geneviève
collection PubMed
description This letter comments on the conclusion drawn by Shirotsuki et al. (2017) in their article entitled “The effect for Japanese workers of a self-help computerized cognitive behaviour therapy program with a supplement soft drink”, recently published in BioPsychoSocial Medicine. The authors concluded that their drink, containing L-carnosine, enhances the effects of a computerized cognitive-behavioural therapy (CCBT) on the psychological well-being of healthy Japanese workers. Yet, we argue that their conclusion is unfounded given their results and the methodological shortcomings of their study. Briefly, while the authors reported improvement on the tension-anxiety subscale of the Profile of Mood States (POMS) in the CCBT only group, they also observed a lack of improvement on this subscale in the CCBT+L-carnosine group suggesting that the drink washes out this beneficial effect of CCBT. Methodological issues include the uncontrolled levels of L-carnosine metabolized by participants jeopardize the study’s internal validity. Also, the clinical meaningfulness of the findings seems dubious as post-treatment scores remained within the range of the general Japanese population. Consequently, we argue that Shirotsuki et al.’s study should be re-conducted before drawing any valid conclusion.
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spelling pubmed-61226622018-09-10 L-carnosine as an enhancer to computerized cognitive behaviour therapy in Japanese workers, an unjustified claim Sauvé, Geneviève Bastien, Marie-France Roy-Gelencser, Casandra El-Baalbaki, Ghassan Biopsychosoc Med Commentary This letter comments on the conclusion drawn by Shirotsuki et al. (2017) in their article entitled “The effect for Japanese workers of a self-help computerized cognitive behaviour therapy program with a supplement soft drink”, recently published in BioPsychoSocial Medicine. The authors concluded that their drink, containing L-carnosine, enhances the effects of a computerized cognitive-behavioural therapy (CCBT) on the psychological well-being of healthy Japanese workers. Yet, we argue that their conclusion is unfounded given their results and the methodological shortcomings of their study. Briefly, while the authors reported improvement on the tension-anxiety subscale of the Profile of Mood States (POMS) in the CCBT only group, they also observed a lack of improvement on this subscale in the CCBT+L-carnosine group suggesting that the drink washes out this beneficial effect of CCBT. Methodological issues include the uncontrolled levels of L-carnosine metabolized by participants jeopardize the study’s internal validity. Also, the clinical meaningfulness of the findings seems dubious as post-treatment scores remained within the range of the general Japanese population. Consequently, we argue that Shirotsuki et al.’s study should be re-conducted before drawing any valid conclusion. BioMed Central 2018-09-04 /pmc/articles/PMC6122662/ /pubmed/30202430 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13030-018-0130-3 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Commentary
Sauvé, Geneviève
Bastien, Marie-France
Roy-Gelencser, Casandra
El-Baalbaki, Ghassan
L-carnosine as an enhancer to computerized cognitive behaviour therapy in Japanese workers, an unjustified claim
title L-carnosine as an enhancer to computerized cognitive behaviour therapy in Japanese workers, an unjustified claim
title_full L-carnosine as an enhancer to computerized cognitive behaviour therapy in Japanese workers, an unjustified claim
title_fullStr L-carnosine as an enhancer to computerized cognitive behaviour therapy in Japanese workers, an unjustified claim
title_full_unstemmed L-carnosine as an enhancer to computerized cognitive behaviour therapy in Japanese workers, an unjustified claim
title_short L-carnosine as an enhancer to computerized cognitive behaviour therapy in Japanese workers, an unjustified claim
title_sort l-carnosine as an enhancer to computerized cognitive behaviour therapy in japanese workers, an unjustified claim
topic Commentary
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6122662/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30202430
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13030-018-0130-3
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