The placebo effect is an interesting phenomenon whereby a dummy treatment can produce therapeutic benefit, such as, pain relief. While evidence for the placebo effect is growing, relatively few studies have explored ways of enhancing placebo effects. To address this, the current study tested whether placebo-induced analgesia could be enhanced by providing an educational handout about the effica...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Few national data exist on physicians' use of and beliefs about placebos in routine health care. METHODS We mailed a 22-question, confidential survey about placebo use and beliefs to a random sample of 1,000 members of the American Academy of Family Physicians. RESULTS A total of 412 of 970 (43%) eligible physicians responded, and 56% of respondents said they had u...

Breastfeeding is an economic and valuable method to protect infant health during the life and provides unique biological and emotional effect for mothers and infants.  Objectives: This study was designed to compare effect of fennel on maternal serum prolactin level and neonatal weight gain to effect of domperidone and placebo on these variables.  Research method and materials: In this study 1...

The clinical utility of the placebo effect has long hinged on physicians deceptively administering an objective placebo treatment to their patients. However, the power of the placebo does not reside in the sham treatment itself; rather, it comes from the psychosocial forces that surround the patient and the treatment. To this end, we propose a new framework for understanding and leveraging the ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The likelihood of detecting a therapeutic signal of an effective drug for schizophrenia is impeded by a high placebo effect and by high dropout of patients. Several unsuccessful trials of schizophrenia, at least partly due to highly variable placebo effects, have indicated the necessity for a robust methodology to evaluate such a placebo effect and reasons for dropout....

BACKGROUND The placebo effect is usually studied in clinical settings for decreasing negative symptoms such as pain, depression and anxiety. There is interest in exploring the placebo effect also outside the clinic, for enhancing positive aspects of performance or cognition. Several studies indicate that placebo can enhance cognitive abilities including memory, implicit learning and general kno...

The therapeutic response to a drug treatment is a mixture of direct pharmacological action and placebo effect. Therefore, harnessing the positive aspects of the placebo effect and reducing the negative ones could potentially benefit the patient. This article is aimed at providing an overview for clinicians of the importance of contextual psychosocial variables in determining treatment response,...

Although the placebo in a clinical trial is often considered simply a baseline against which to evaluate the efficacy of a clinical intervention, there is evidence that the magnitude of placebo effect may be a critical factor in determining the results of a trial. This article examines the question of whether devices have enhanced placebo effects and, if so, what the implications may be. While ...

THE EFFECT OF EPHEDRINE AND PLACEBO ON HEMODYNAMIC CHANGES ITS COMPLICATIONS IN PATIENTS UNDERGOING PERCUTANEOUS NEPHROLITHOTOMY WITH SPINAL ANESTHESIA

in this study, the effect of lovastatin and fluvastatin was compared with placebo in patients with high levels of total cholesterol and low density lipoprotein cholesterol (ldl-c) on the plasma lipid profile. in a prospective single blind clinical trial with convenient sampling, 120 hypercholesterolemic men and women with tcholesterol ≥220 mg/dl, ldl-c ≥ 160 mg/dl, and triglyceride ≤ 350 mg/dl ...