Although placebo pills are supposed to have no pharmacological activity, people taking placebo pills describe a variety of positive (i.e., placebo phenomenon) and negative (i.e., nocebo phenomenon) reactions. This has major clinical implications. Placebo reactions account for a substantial part of improvement when treating patients with hypertension, mental disorders, and even after surgical pr...

OBJECTIVE The Internet has expanded the scope for creating health scares and increased the risk of nocebo responding in individuals exposed to misinformation about threats to personal health posed by aspects of modern life, such as exposure to new technologies. It was the aim of this experiment to investigate whether the delivery of positive expectations might reduce or reverse symptoms trigger...

A useful way to summarize the placebo-nocebo theme is to consider the tension and interaction between conviction and responsibility. With the conviction of the mainstream biomedical paradigm prevalent today, it would be tempting to say to Dr. Engel's patient: "That question is nonsense. Cancer pain is not classified as 'male' or 'female.' Pain varies with location in the body and other factors....

CONTEXT Placebo and nocebo effects, the therapeutic and adverse effects, respectively, of inert substances or sham procedures, represent serious confounds in the evaluation of therapeutic interventions. They are also an example of cognitive processes, particularly expectations, capable of influencing physiology. OBJECTIVE To examine the contribution of 2 different neurotransmitters, the endog...

OBJECTIVE To compare the incidence of adverse events between active and placebo arms of randomized clinical trials in depressive children and adolescents (C&A) with antidepressant treatments, in order to look for similarities in both groups that allow to establish a possible nocebo effect. METHODS Systematic search strategy (January 1974-March 2013) in electronic databases, conference abstrac...

Background: Placebo and nocebo responses have important consequences for the development of pharmaceutical drugs design randomized controlled trials (RCTs). They can lead to incorrect measurement treatment-related efficacy adverse effects (AEs). Objectives: The goal this study was evaluate frequency magnitude placebo in placebo-controlled RCTs non-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) biologics Janus kin...