Placebo

Schizophrenia clinical trials have exhibited a trend of increasing placebo responses and decreasing treatment effects over a 24-year period, particularly North American trials, according to study results published in Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

We are privileged to have a stellar group of discussants in this issue of Healio Rheumatology addressing the multiple facets of the placebo effect in the field of rheumatology. For a long time now, the ‘placebo effect’ has represented little more than a troublesome obstacle that clinical investigators — in the course of clinical trials with our growing armamentarium of therapeutics — must overcome to demonstrate that a drug or therapy is truly effective.

Network functional connectivity analyses based on electroencephalography, or EEG, effectively differentiate between responses to an antidepressant vs. placebo, according to results of a secondary analysis of a randomized clinical trial published in JAMA Psychiatry. Researchers noted that this ability to differentiate may help establish a placebo signature in clinical trials through an alternative direction.