Methodological concerns limiting the detection of treatment effects in the OSAN trial of blue-blocking glasses for mania.

Authors

Tone Elise Gjøtterud Henriksen, Jörg Assmus, Barbara Barbini, Francesco Benedetti, Jeanette Solheimslid Bjørke, Ole Bernt Fasmer, Pierre Alexis Geoffroy, John Gottlieb, Håvard Kallestad, James Phelps, Ieva Ratke, Peter F J Schulte, Silje Skrede

Published in

International journal of bipolar disorders. Volume 14. Issue 1. Oct 20, 2026. Epub Oct 20, 2026.

Abstract

This correspondence is a commentary to the recently published report from the OSAN trial by Fiedorowicz et al. but with applicability to the broader research involving blue-blocking glasses and patients in a manic episode.
Clinical studies on dark therapy are still rare, and we read with great interest the report from the OSAN trial published in Journal of Affective Disorders the 1st of April 2026.
The sample was significantly higher in manic symptoms, more medicated and less adherent to the intervention than in preceding studies on effects of dark therapy for mania. Efforts to comply with the gold standard of blinding of raters may have come with the cost of underestimating the symptom level. Extended intervention period (2 weeks) may have caused the extensive loss to follow up (35/42 (83%) at 2 weeks). Several issues with the statistical methods and data reporting make the results difficult to interpret.
The statistical power of the OSAN trial may have been substantially reduced by attrition and multiple sources of variance to the data. The results from the trial should be interpreted with caution.

PMID:
42900401
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 21 Oct 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.