Novel designs and paradigms to study the placebo response in gastroenterology.

Author: Enck P1, Chae Y2, Elsenbruch S3
Affiliation: <sup>1</sup>Department of Internal Medicine, Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany. Electronic address: paul.enck@uni-tuebingen.de. <sup>2</sup>Acupuncture &amp; Meridian Science Research Center, College of Korean Medicine, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Republic of Korea. <sup>3</sup>Institute of Medical Psychology &amp; Behavioral Immunobiology, University Hospital Essen, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany.
Conference/Journal: Curr Opin Pharmacol.
Date published: 2017 Oct 26
Other: Volume ID: 37 , Pages: 72-79 , Special Notes: doi: 10.1016/j.coph.2017.10.003. [Epub ahead of print] , Word Count: 125


The investigation of the placebo and the nocebo effect and their mechanisms has a rather short history of less than 20 years, especially in gastroenterology, and only the last 5 years have resulted in substantial improvement of understanding. Placebo refers to symptom improvement following a treatment, nocebo to the opposite, symptom worsening. Among the factors driving this progress are traditional psychological models derived from learning (conditioning) theory bridging into clinical science, new animal models to investigate the pharmacology of placebo analgesia, and novel study designs to overcome limitations of traditional randomized and placebo-controlled study designs in drug testing. These are explored here for their implementation and application in gastroenterology, with a focus on visceral pain and nausea.

Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

PMID: 29102743 DOI: 10.1016/j.coph.2017.10.003