Placebos work even when patients know they’re only sugar!

Researchers from Harvard and a medical centre in Boston investigated the ethical use of placebos (pills with no active medication) because studies have shown that lots of placebos were being prescribed to patients who unwittingly took them thinking that they were active medications.

The study followed people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, some of whom got no treatment and some of whom were told they were getting “sugar pills” twice a day and had “placebo” written on their medicine bottle. 59% of those who got the placebo reported symptom relief, as compared to 35% in the control or no treatment group.
One possible explanation for the “known” placebo effect could be that the actual process or ritual of taking medication could trigger the production of chemicals that reduce pain.

For more details on this study, see Kaptchuk, T. et al. in The Public Library of Science ONE (Vol. 5, No. 12).