A placebo is a fake treatment. The placebo effect is the phenomenon whereby patients feel some benefit even from placebo treatments.
Commentary
Wired has an excellent article on the increasing effectiveness of placebos. It seems that this increase is correlated with the lifting of the ban on direct-to-consumer marketing of drugs by the FDA in 1997.
Other research is focused on determining how placebos work. In one study, researchers were able to see parts of the placebo effect in action in the spine by telling participants that they were trying out a new painkilling cream against a non-painkilling cream (both creams were inactive). While the exact mechanism needs further investigation, this was the first step towards demonstrating the participation of the spine in the placebo effect.
See Also
- Placebos Are Getting More Effective at Wired for the full article.
- Placebos trigger an opioid hit in the brain at New Scientist for a brief discussion of the real effects that placebos have (i.e. generating chemicals in our bodies).
- The Dilute Homeopathy for an example of a very expensive placebo.
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4 comments:
Just thinking aloud...bear with me. What if the placebo effect is actually a response to the placebo pill? We know that (a) certain lovely members of our family (self-included) get grouchy, anxious, etc. when hungry, and a little bit of orange juice, a granola bar, or cookie will make us right as rain, and (b) many people are constantly on diets or, in general, do not consume enough chocolate. And (c) placebo pills are some sort of sugar compound... I think I might be onto something.
Does the placebo effect (i.e. belief that the placebo is an active agent and a correlating reduction of symptoms) work on issues other than pain? All examples that I have seen measure pain or perceived pain. Surely placebos are used in other medication trials; I would be interested in observations of these cases, too.
@ Victoria: Indeed, placebos are useful in many contexts. The Wired article mentions studies that showed the placebo effect in relieving "anxiety, depression, sexual dysfunction, [and] the tremors of Parkinson's disease" in addition to soothing ulcers (especially when labelled "antacid").
So, yes, placebos are effective in many contexts (presumably many more than listed here).
Check this out.
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2010/10/19/whats-placebo/
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