Highlights from the literature

Placebo works in abdominal pain In April 2017, Lucina commented on the high placebo response rate seen in studies comparing migraine headache treatments (doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2017–3 12 882). Now a review paper has looked specifically at placebo effects reported in studies of abdominal pain-related functional gastrointestinal disorders (AP-FGIDs) in children (HoekmanJ et al. J Pediatr 2017. doi.org10.1016/j.jpeds.2016.12.022). They found 21 randomised placebo-controlled trials, which used a variety of pain-rating scales. Looking only at the placebo groups, they found that the proportion of children ending up with no pain was 17% (95% CI 8% to 32%), and reporting an improvement in pain was 41% (95% CI 34% to 49%). As the studies varied considerably in their designs, they were able to look at factors that seemed to create a significantly greater placebo response: these included, as expected, longer durations of treatment and higher drop-out rates, and more surprisingly, once-daily versus twice-daily...
Source: Archives of Disease in Childhood - Category: Pediatrics Tags: Lucina Source Type: research