A recent study shows that patients who have Parkinson’s disease have a lower objective response to PD treatment in a clinical study, if they know they might be taking the placebo.
This is known as the ‘lessebo effect,’ and is one of the negative aspects of the well-known placebo effect. This is where the belief that you are getting treatment can cause an improvement, even if you are not receiving any actual treatment. However, the knowledge by the patient that they might be taking a drug that is a placebo also can reduce the effects of treatment, which causes the aforementioned lessebo effect.
According to Anthony Lang at the University of Toronto, a group of 3277 patients were given active treatments in 28 blinded clinical studies, where the other group got active treatment, and 4554 patients got active treatment in one of the 42 trials that were placebo controlled.
Across all of the studies, the improvement of the motor section of the Unified PD Rating Scale, or mUPDRS, was 6.0 for those patients who were in trials controlled by placebo, and 7.6 points for those in active controlled clinical studies. This is a major 1.6 point difference.
The researchers stated that a minimal clinically important difference in these studies in in the range of 1.5-5.1 mUPDRS units for Parkinson’s disease. So, it seems that the lessebo effect in this case is clinically relevant.
Trials that have active comparators were longer than trials controlled by placebo – 28.1 vs. 19.1 weeks, and were less focused on patients who have PD – 28.6% vs. 59.5%.
In an editorial related to this study, Ronald Postuma (Montreal General Hospital, Canada) and Roger Albin (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA), noted that the lessebo effect can affect the number of people participating in the trial, and it also has serious implications for gauging the efficacy of many PD drugs.
Medication Reminders for PD Patients
If your loved on has PD, you know how important it is to ensure that she gets here medications on time. Taking medications on a timely basis in PD patients is incredibly important to manage symptoms. Some of the best medication reminders you can buy include:
Vibrating Alarm Medication Reminder
