Word: placebo
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...both the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the U.S. Army provided funding) involved about 16,400 Thai volunteers. Half were given six injections comprising two AIDS vaccines, neither of which had proved effective in previous studies; the other half of the study group was given a placebo. (Read "The Flip Side of Placebos: The Nocebo Effect...
Overall, the study found that the two-vaccine approach was 31% effective in preventing HIV infection: 51 of the roughly 8,200 people who had been inoculated eventually acquired HIV, compared with 74 people in the placebo group. The analysis that resulted in the 31% figure, however, included study participants who became infected with HIV before the trial concluded and did not complete the entire vaccination schedule; it also factored out participants who were discovered to have been HIV-positive before the trial began. At a press conference at the Paris meeting, Dr. Nelson L. Michael, a virologist with...
Exactly why the placebo and nocebo responses arise is a puzzle, but a fascinating article in Wired magazine noted earlier this year that the positive placebo response to drugs has increased during clinical trials over the past few years. The article speculated that drug advertising - which exploded after 1997, when the Food and Drug Administration began allowing direct-to-consumer ads - has led us to expect more from drugs. Those expectations, in turn, have made us feel better just for popping a pill. (Placebo responses can also occur simply when you book appointments with doctors or psychotherapists.) (See the most...
...Pain study found that date of publication had no effect on the side effects reported: the placebo and nocebo responses were just as robust before 1997 as after. That leaves scientists still looking for an answer. The Wired story suggested that the act of merely doing something good for yourself may stimulate the body's "endogenous health-care system," perhaps by inhibiting stress hormones. But that wouldn't explain why the same act might lead to phantom nocebo aches and pains...
...final question: What happens now that more of us are onto the placebo/nocebo problem? Will our expectations adjust to reality? Who knows? "The placebo is a trickster," says Ted Kaptchuk, a placebo expert at Harvard Medical School. "We still don't understand how it works." But Kaptchuk says it's possible to defeat placebo benefits and overcome nocebo problems simply by being aware of them. Mind, in other words, over mind...