'Expensive' placebos work better than 'cheap' ones

January 30, 2015  22:37

How do you convert a simple saline solution into a useful treatment for people with Parkinson’s disease? Tell them it’s a drug that costs $100 per dose. And if you want to make it even more effective, tell them it costs $1,500 instead.

That’s what researchers from the University of Cincinnati discovered in an unusual clinical trial. Instead of testing a placebo against an actual drug, they pitted two placebos against each other. The only difference between the two sham treatments was their purported price.  

The team from the University of Cincinnati and their colleagues had a hunch that patients would be more responsive to a fake drug they thought was real if it came with a heftier price tag. The higher price would be seen as a signal that the treatment was better, they figured.

So they recruited 12 patients with “moderately advanced” Parkinson’s and asked them to participate in a clinical trial of a medication described as "a new injectable dopamine agonist.” Patients with Parkinson’s lose the brain cells that produce dopamine, and a drug like this could pick up the slack.

 

 

 

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