The Placebo Effect in Veterinary Medicine: Interpreting Clinical Study Results in Placebo-Controlled Studies

摘要

The word placebo is derived from the Latin "I want to please" and was originally defined as a medicine that was prescribed to please a patient, not for its proven effectiveness. Commonly, placebos are called 'sugar pills' - that is, a pill that mightlook like a 'real' drug, but only be a dose of sugar, to which the patient responds by feeling better, in the context of some relevant belief or learning.1 Naively, one could think of this as fooling the patient with a drug or therapy that didn't have aphysiological therapeutic effect, but because the patient believed it was a "real" drug that would benefit their condition, they actually felt better. A placebo has its effect because it is expected to have that effect.1 However, there is significantly more to the placebo effect than merely fooling the patient.