The “˜Placebo-Effect’ Not Just In The Head
German pain researchers said on Thursday that they may have discovered one of the ways in which the “˜placebo effect’ works, which has implications for the future treatment of chronic pain and other disorders.
Most people think of the placebo effect as just a trick on your body through the power of suggestion. However, through modern imaging technology, researchers discovered that by simply believing in a pain treatment can restrict pain signaling in a region of the spinal cord called the dorsal horn.
This new information indicates that there is an incredible biological mechanism in motion.
"It is deeply rooted in very, very early areas of the central nervous system. That definitely speaks for a strong effect," lead researcher Falk Eippert of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf told Reuters.
Eippert and his colleagues studied changes in spinal cord activity by using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI.
The research involved applying painful heat to the arms of 15 healthy men and then comparing the spinal cord responses when they thought they had been treated with either an anesthetic cream or a placebo.
Neither of the creams were active, but the fMRI scans revealed that nerve activity was substantially reduced among subjects who believed they had received the anesthetic.
For so long, doctors and drug-makers have been baffled and frustrated by the way fraudulent medicines containing no active ingredient are able to produce real clinical benefits.
In medical research trials, patients are usually dosed with either an experimental drug or a placebo. The fact that those on the placebo often also get the desired results is what has made is so difficult to determine whether a new drug is working.
The placebo effect has proven to be especially powerful when treating central nervous system conditions, like depression and pain.
Up to this point, experts have considered the effect to be merely psychological, but the new German research just added to the growing body of evidence that there is an important physical element involved.
It remains uncertain as to what exactly is responsible for turning down pain signaling in the spine once the placebo is administered, but Eippert believes variety of chemicals could be involved such as natural opioids, noradrenaline and serotonin.
Eippert and colleagues wrote in the journal Science that their work "opens up new avenues for assessing the efficacy and possible site of action of new treatments for various forms of pain, including chronic pain."
The word placebo is derived from the Latin word meaning "I shall please."
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