Insomnia and its treatments—trend analysis and publication profile of randomized clinical trials

Abstract

This study aimed to describe the publication profile of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) for insomnia. A systematic review of RCTs regarding interventions for non-comorbid insomnia in adults retrieved 132 RCTs: 58 related to pharmacological treatments, 71 to non-pharmacological treatments, and 3 to both interventions. The treatments with the biggest publication profile were digital CBT-I (dCBT-I) (n = 35), in-person CBT-I (n = 28) and zolpidem (n = 22). Regarding dCBT-I, the median publication year is 2019, with 1.13 ± 1.91 RCTs published per year. Regarding zolpidem, the median publication year is 2008, with 0.71 ± 0.97 RCTs per year. Regarding in-person CBT-I, the median publication year is 2018, with 0.90 ± 1.14 RCTs per year. The majority of the available RCTs are on non-pharmacological interventions, particularly CBT-I (mostly in the 2000s) and dCBT-I (mostly in the last decade), although presenting a reduced methodological quality in comparison to pharmacological interventions. These data suggest an increasing focus on non-pharmacological interventions for insomnia.