Homoeopathy's clinical effects are placebo effects, The Lancet

[HuckleB]

Homoeopathy's clinical effects are placebo effects, The Lancet

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=29719

"The evidence for a specific effect of homoeopathic remedies is weak, according to an article in this week's issue of THE LANCET. The authors conclude that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are compatible with placebo effects.

Matthias Egger (University of Berne, Switzerland) and colleagues compared 110 placebo-controlled, randomised trials of homoeopathy with 110 conventional-medicine trials matched for disorder and type of outcome.

The clinical topics studied in the trials ranged from respiratory infections to surgery to anaesthesiology.

The researchers looked at the treatment effects in smaller, low quality trials and larger trials of higher quality. They found, in both groups, that smaller trials of lower quality showed more beneficial treatment effects than larger and higher-quality trials.


..."

[etherealtruth]

1. How could it be anything other?

[Maple]

2. Well oddly enough, placebos work too

Placebos trigger an opioid hit in the brain
22:00 23 August 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Alison Motluk

It seems that placebos have a real physical, not imagined, effect – activating the production of chemicals in the brain that relieve pain.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7892

[HuckleB]

4. Yes, of course.

What the mind does is physiologically communicate physiological changes. Of course, the mind doesn't have the ability to do this for every ailment or for every degree of every ailment.

And that doesn't justify the lack of evidence base for any individual treatment.

[bemildred]

3. Placebo effects are not to be sneezed at. nt

[GeorgeBushytail]

5. I buy generic placebo to save money

[ArchTeryx]

6. Except for one small problem.

It also happens to work on dogs, and infants, which don't have placebo effects. I've seen this myself, and I'd love to see a study with animals, or with extremely young children, to back up all this "homeopathy is no better then placebos" stuff.

-- ArchTeryx

[HuckleB]

7. Not a problem. There is a placebo effect in dogs and infants.

Spend some time perusing Vet Research journals. The placebo effect doesn't just kick in at some level of human development.

[ArchTeryx]

8. Oh?

Placebo effect on animals, especially, makes no sense at all, since it depends on having the psychological werewithal to understand 'if I take this, it must make me better!' Dogs simply can't psych themselves out like that. They only understand straight cause and effect. Human infants I can buy...maybe. Animals, especially domestic animals, I simply don't.

[HuckleB]

9. It doesn't make sense?

You may not understand it, but spend some time at the library researching Vet journals and you'll see that it exists.

And that doesn't even begin to deal with the so-called nocebo effect.

http://www.salon.com/health/feature/1999/07/15/nocebo/print.html

Which, uh, also appears to affect animals:

"To Moerman, the most intriguing part of the PBB episode may come from the cows. He recently charted milk production in Michigan cows in pounds of milk per cow per year ("I had never really realized how wonderful agricultural statistics are") and found a sharp drop in milk production in 1974. "It drops by 10 to 12 percent. It just goes 'kerchunk' and it drops. Ninety-nine percent of the cows never got any of this PBB, but their production of milk dropped anyway. Well, you know cows don't read the newspaper. But what do cows do?" Moerman asks. "Hang out with farmers?" I guess. "That's right. They hang out with farmers. I think we have a nocebo effect in domestic animals."

Moerman intends to research this intriguing area further before publishing, but the working hypothesis is that the farmers' concern about their cows, who for all they knew had been gobbling pure poison, was somehow communicated to the cows, who responded by slacking off on the milk production. He also points out a difference between nocebo and placebo.

Rats are apparently as vulnerable as cows. In one experiment, which didn't set out to be about nocebo, rats were given sweetened water to drink and then given shots of cyclophosphamide, which causes nausea and also induces sometimes fatal immunosuppression. To the experimenters' surprise, rats who only got one shot of cyclophosphamide but kept on being fed the sweetened water continued dying at a high rate. The rats associated feeling dreadful with the water, and so as long as they got the water they felt dreadful -- even unto death."

[knitter4democracy]

10. Why do you think my husband tells his patients about it?

He can't prescribe a placebo, so he does include homeopathy stuff in a list of over the counter meds that can help. He's had many happy patients, and as long as they believe it works, it works.

I had a placebo effect when I was in labor for my first child. That's a powerful thing.