Let's liberalize the placebo: the price paradox

“Sometimes it is enough to simply believe that you have hired a drug to get better. is theeffect placebo, which occurs when i symptoms of a patient improve after taking a substance free from pharmacologically active ingredients (someone said homeopathy?). A well-known phenomenon in medicine, so much so that in clinical trials i new drugs they have to prove their own effectiveness against that of a placebo, but which still has several dark sides.

A new study byUniversity of Cincinnati, published in the magazine neurology, reveals, for example, a hitherto unknown feature: that is, that even in placebo, The price it makes the difference. The study was carried out on patients suffering from Parkinson's disease, a pathology for which it has long been demonstrated that the intake of placebo can be extremely effective.

The 12 volunteers who participated in the experiment were assured that they would receive a new drug capable of boosting production Of dopamine, a neurotransmitter which is present in insufficient quantities in patients affected by Parkinsons. The researchers explained to the patients that they would be injected with two different but equally effective versions of the substance: one costing $1,500, and one more economic from 100 bucks dose.

In both cases, the patients actually received simple injections of physiological solution. By measuring the benefits of sui therapy symptoms engines of patients, the researchers found that, on average, the effectiveness of the placebo it was almost double in those who had received the first most expensive fake drug, compared to the group that was injected first version economic.

In both cases, the efficacy was lower than that of the drug normally used by the patients, the levodopa, but in the group that had previously taken the placebo more costly the benefits came remarkably close to those of the real drug.”

The Neurology Study

12 February 2015 – MondoFarmacia edited by Paolo Vintani