Placebo

placebo /pla·ce·bo/ (plah-se´bo) [L.] any dummy medical treatment; originally, a medicinal preparation having no specific pharmacological activity against the patient's illness or complaint given solely for the psychophysiological effects of the treatment; more recently, a dummy treatment administered to the control group in a controlled clinical trial in order that the specific and nonspecific effects of the experimental treatment can be distinguished.

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pla·ce·bo (pl-sb)

n. pl. pla·ce·bos or pla·ce·boes

1. A substance containing no medication and prescribed or given to reinforce a patient's expectation to get well.

2. An inactive substance or preparation used as a control in an experiment or test to determine the effectiveness of a medicinal drug.

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Placebo

An inactive substance with no pharmacological action that is administered to some patients in clinical trials to determine the relative effectiveness of another drug administered to a second group of patients.

Mentioned in: Saw Palmetto, Sildenafil Citrate

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placebo (pl·sēˑ·bō),

n 1. inert substance used in control groups of clinical studies to maintain blinding.
2. beneficial effects of the meaning and context of treatment independent of the treatment itself. See also meaning effect.

placebo effect,

n 1. the effect of any therapeutic technique that has no objectively determinable action on the illness for which it is prescribed.
2. the patient's innate healing, defense and survival processes that are elicited through the meaning and context of a treatment.

placebo response,

n changes in a patient's condition from the meaning and context of the treatment and not from an active agent.

placebo sag,

n the reduction in the efficacy of a particular placebo therapy due to prolonged absence of an active stimulus.

placebo therapeutics,

n.pl treatments in which a physician attempts to engage the patient's own healing processes by prescribing physiologically inactive stimuli.

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placebo (plsēbō),

n a substance that resembles medicine superficially and is believed by the patient to be medicine but that has no intrinsic drug activity.

placebo effect,

n the real or imagined effect of a placebo, which may actually be the same effect ordinarily associated with the administration of a therapeutically active agent.

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placebo

[L.] a substance given to a patient as medicine or a procedure performed on a patient that has no intrinsic therapeutic value but pleases the patient's owner who expects to have to give the animal some medicine. A placebo may be administered in the form of a sugar pill or an injection of sterile water.

Placebos are also used in controlled clinical trials of new drugs. While some patients selected at random are given the new drug, others are given a placebo. Often this is an active placebo that mimics the new drug's side-effects. Neither the patients nor the veterinarians know who is receiving the real drug. The patients taking the new drug must have significantly more relief of signs than the control group taking the placebo for the new drug to be considered to be effective. Placebos can produce an effect that is either positive, with improvement of signs, or negative, with worsening of signs or the appearance of adverse side-effects.