According to recent studies, people increasingly consider themselves to be cured, not actually taking any medication, but only believing that they have taken it.
Before launching new drugs on the market, scientists are using clinical trials to test whether they are more effective than a placebo, a substance that does not have medicinal properties, the healing effect of which is determined by the patient's belief that it helps him.
The very phenomenon of such healing is called the placebo effect. The most common placebo used is lactose, and a capsule containing this substance is called a dummy.
Research has shown that the difference in efficacy between real drugs and placebos has narrowed significantly over the past 25 years, especially in the United States. Does this mean that Americans are so suggestible, or is it something else?
The power of imagination
A sick Londoner at the end of the 18th century had several treatment options. For example, you could go to a small shop in Leicester Square and for five guineas buy a device consisting of a pair of sharp metal rods, which, as it were, "pulled" the disease out of the body.
This treatment was not cheap at all. The device was called the "Perkins Tractors" after its inventor Elisha Perkins, a self-taught doctor from Connecticut. Perkins claimed to have treated George Washington himself.
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The device was believed to have an effective effect on a number of diseases, such as rheumatism or various inflammations, thanks to the special alloy from which the rods were made.
However, in 1799, the renowned natural scientist John Haygart decided to test the effectiveness of the Perkins device by testing the imagination in patients.
During the experiment, five patients suffering from chronic rheumatism were treated with the same rods as in the Perkins device, but made of wood.
“All but one patient assured us that the pain was gone. One felt warmth in his knee and noted with satisfaction that it was much easier for him to walk. Another was relieved for a full nine hours. The pain returned when he went to bed. The third felt a tingling sensation for two hours, Haygart's report says.
On the second day of the experiment, the patients were treated with real Perkins rods, but the effect of them was the same as that of a wooden counterfeit.
“Such is the great power of imagination,” concluded Haygarth.
Miraculous "dummies"
The placebo effect is most commonly seen when people experience pain, fatigue, nausea, and depression. Brain imaging of patients taking placebo shows that areas that can control stress and pain are activated.
Brain scans showed how the placebo activated the areas responsible for stress and pain control
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires scientists to consider the placebo effect when developing new drugs. For this, in the course of any clinical trials of medications, some participants in the process are given not the test substance, but a placebo, without warning in advance who got what.
The efficacy of the test drug is calculated by comparing the number of patients who felt improvement in both groups. For a drug to hit the shelves, the FDA mandates that the number in the group receiving the real substance must be significantly higher than in the placebo group.
However, the ratio appears to be gradually decreasing as the placebo effect spreads to more and more people.
Scientists say that some of the most common drugs for depression today would not be tested in clinical trials.
Pharmaceuticals in a panic
This state of affairs worries the pharmaceutical industry. A number of drugs were rejected at the stage of clinical trials, while their development cost companies more than a billion dollars.
So far, no one can answer the question, what is the secret of such an increase in the effectiveness of placebo. Perhaps the results of the latest research, published in the journal Pain, will help scientists get to the bottom of the truth.
Comparing the results of 80 different trials of drugs for neuropathic pain, scientists from McGill University in Montreal concluded that the trend was due to the Americans. It is the residents of the United States, according to studies, who begin to feel better just from the fact of participating in clinical trials, regardless of whether they took a real drug or not.