Placebos activate brain's 'heal switch'
Updated
Researchers found that people given a placebo improved, sometimes dramatically.
Can the act of simply taking a pill make you feel better, regardless of what's in it?
That's the idea behind the placebo effect.
The concept has been studied since the end of World War II, when randomised control trials were first introduced.
Researchers found that people given a placebo improved, sometimes dramatically.
The idea of the placebo effect has always fascinated Australian pain researcher Damien Finniss, from Sydney's Royal North Shore Pain Management and Research Institute.
"At the core, placebo is about the mind-brain interaction so we know that there's lots of psychological components in placebo therapy, that's patients' beliefs, expectations, desire for improvement in their symptoms," he said.
He has published a review of the clinical and ethical considerations of placebo treatment in the scientific journal, the Lancet.
One of the key conclusions is that there is not just one placebo effect, but a combination of many.
Researchers found it is not what is in the sugar pill or fake injection that makes patients feel healthier, but the act itself of receiving treatment that switches on the brain to heal.
And they found patients do not have to even get a placebo for the benefits to occur.
"It's about using our routine therapies but realising there is another component to what we do, these internal healing mechanisms that we can activate to improve our current therapies," Mr Finniss said.
But one of the major concerns about placebos has been the ethics of withholding treatment without a patient's knowledge.
The new research shows that the placebo effect works, even if patients know they are getting a fake treatment.
The authors use the example of a trial, where a drug was far less effective if patients didn't know they were getting the medication.
Pain expert Professor Michael Cousins believes placebos will play an important role in treating conditions such as chronic pain.
"We need to be more adept at using placebo as a part of the treatment we provide because placebo have very few adverse effects," he said.
He stresses more studies need to be done about the efficacy of placebo treatments before they can be routinely used.
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