Re: ECTRIMS Cleveland Autopsy Study-jugular VMs in pwMS
Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 3:58 pm
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NE ... 5243442106
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entre ... xed=google
And in MS studies, the patients chosen tend to be those with very active disease, who are then likely to "regress to the mean." This regression, which is a reduction in number of lesions to the more usual number, gets counted as placebo when it is a result of the design of the study.
A meta-analysis of 114 trials found little evidence of placebo effect.We found little evidence in general that placebos had powerful clinical effects. Although placebos had no significant effects on objective or binary outcomes, they had possible small benefits in studies with continuous subjective outcomes and for the treatment of pain. Outside the setting of clinical trials, there is no justification for the use of placebos.
Henry Beecher, who invented the placebo effect, has had his own studies reanalyzed years later, to the conclusion that there was no placebo effect in Beecher's studies.The powerful placebo effect: fact or fiction?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entre ... xed=google
And in MS studies, the patients chosen tend to be those with very active disease, who are then likely to "regress to the mean." This regression, which is a reduction in number of lesions to the more usual number, gets counted as placebo when it is a result of the design of the study.