SynthesisThe Australian and New Zealand journal of psychiatry2025
Safety and efficacy of methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)-assisted psychotherapy in post-traumatic stress disorder: An overview of systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
Synthesis in The Australian and New Zealand journal of psychiatry, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Subjective and neurocognitive profiling of clinical doses of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) in healthy volunteers: implications for therapeutic use.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Review
- Current perspectives on psychedelic treatments in Europe.The Lancet regional health. Europe · 2026Review
- Making a case for using MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for borderline personality disorder and complex PTSD: a descriptive systematic review of the literature.Therapeutic advances in psychopharmacology · 2026Review
- Oxytocin: a neglected hormone in pituitary disease - From function to the diagnosis of a deficiency, resulting clinical relevance, and potential treatment options in endocrinology.Archives of endocrinology and metabolism · 2025Review
- Novel psychedelic interventions for post-traumatic stress disorder and their promise for precision medicine.Therapeutic advances in psychopharmacology · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveTo critically evaluate published and unpublished systematic reviews and meta-analyses on the safety and efficacy of methylenedioxymethamphetamine-assisted psychotherapy for post-traumatic stress disorder.
methodsSix bibliometric databases and grey literature were searched from inception to 9 May 2024 for systematic reviews on the safety and efficacy of methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)-assisted psychotherapy compared to psychotherapy alone among adults with post-traumatic stress disorder. Quality assessment using the AMSTAR-2 tool was conducted independently by two investigators.
resultsFourteen systematic reviews comprising 20 primary studies involving up to 353 participants were included. All reviews included studies of one-to-three sessions of 50-125 mg MDMA-assisted psychotherapy (some with supplemental dosage) compared to either 25-40 mg of MDMA or inactive placebo with psychotherapy. Four were deemed high quality. Meta-analyses reported substantial benefits of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in improving post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms (standardised mean difference, 0.8-1.3), response rate (relative risk, 1.3-3.5) and remission rate (relative risk, 2.3-2.9) compared to psychotherapy alone. However, for reviews that assessed the certainty of evidence, the evidence was rated as low to very low certainty due to high risk of bias, indirectness and imprecision. There was moderate-quality evidence that MDMA-assisted psychotherapy was associated with an increased odd of transient adverse events. However, reviews noted reliance on spontaneous rather than systematic adverse event reporting, discrepancies between adverse events reported in published studies and clinical trial registries, and a lack of long-term safety data.
conclusionFour high-quality systematic reviews suggest low to very low certainty evidence for efficacy outcomes and moderate to very low quality evidence for safety outcomes.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.