A recent meta-analysis concluded that newer antidepressant drugs are equivalent to or no better than placebos, a conclusion at some variance with their commonly judged clinical effectiveness. The 'disconnect' between randomised controlled trials and clinical practice would benefit from dissection of contributing factors, and redressing limitations to current trial procedures.

BACKGROUND Placebo therapy has always been a subject of controversy in the field of medicine. Some choose to admit it as "fake, irresponsible medicine" while others advocate its effectiveness in various clinical settings. With the advent of the recent concept of mind-body medicine, placebo has entered from fringe to mainstream therapeutics. Some clinicians use it for its actual positive outcome...

The efficacy of ciprofloxacin in eradicating pharyngeal colonization of Neisseria meningitidis was studied among army recruits in Finland. Ciprofloxacin (250 mg) or placebo was given twice a day for 2 days to 118 meningococcal carriers. Meningococcal carriage was eradicated in 96% of subjects given ciprofloxacin and in 13% of those given placebos.

We developed a program code of configuration interaction singles (CIS) based on a numerical grid method. We used Kohn-Sham (KS) as well as Hartree-Fock (HF) orbitals as a reference configuration and Lagrange-sinc functions as a basis set. Our calculations show that KS-CIS is more cost-effective and more accurate than HF-CIS. The former is due to the fact that the non-local HF exchange potential...

OBJECTIVE To provide the first quantitative data on the use of the term "placebo" in the 19th century. DESIGN Computer search of BMJ's archival database from January 1840 (the first issue) through December 1899 for uses of the words "placebo(s)." Grounded theory was used to categorise the implications of uses of the term. RESULTS 71 citations contained the term "placebo(s)." Of these, 22 (3...

B linding refers to the concealment of group allocation from one or more individuals involved in a clinical research study, most commonly a randomized controlled trial (RCT). Although randomization minimizes differences between treatment groups at the outset of the trial, it does nothing to prevent differential treatment of the groups later in the trial or the differential assessment of outcome...

Sugar pills are usually placebos, but Smith et al. (2002, this issue) use one to rescue designer mice unable to make GDP-Fucose. Dietary fucose enters a salvage pathway and spares the mice. Sound simple? Not so. Unknown genetic factors determine life or death.