This is the next installment of our look at the increasingly high placebo response that is plaguing clinical trials in analgesia and psychiatry. Check out the other posts here. Over the past few weeks, we’ve discussed the psychological, neurobiological, and genetic mechanisms responsible for the placebo response. Today, we turn to the study designs used...
This is the fifth installment of our look at placebo response issues in analgesia and psychiatry clinical trials. Read other posts in the series here. Studies examining genetic variants associated with high or low placebo responses – the “placebome” – are relatively recent, but represent an important line of research that can yield insights into...
This is the fourth in our series examining the increasingly high placebo response issues plaguing analgesia and psychiatry clinical trials. Additional posts in the series are located here. As with many other aspects of placebo research, the majority of research on underlying neurobiological mechanisms has focused on placebo analgesia. In fact, roughly 40 positron emission...
This is the third installment of our look at the increasingly high placebo response that is plaguing clinical trials in analgesia and psychiatry. Additional posts in the series can be accessed here. Solutions to the placebo problem require an understanding of the underlying mechanisms. Broadly, research on contributors to the placebo response falls into two...
This is Part Two of our series on the increasingly high placebo response that is plaguing clinical trials in analgesia and psychiatry. Read the other parts here. Analgesic and psychiatric drug development is facing an enormous problem: rising placebo responses in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) threaten the ability of pharmaceutical companies to successfully identify novel...
For hundreds of years, the medical community has known that the mere act of receiving treatment, even if it’s just a sugar pill, can improve a patient’s symptoms. Therefore, in order to ensure that the effects of an experimental treatment are real, most randomized controlled trials (RCTs) include a placebo arm. Placebos are most often...