Placebo

A drug already on the market to treat severely clenched fingers may also be useful in treating the excessively curved penis caused by Peyronie's disease, researchers reported Monday. If the findings are validated in larger trials, the drug, called Xiaflex, could become the first effective medical treatment for the condition, which apart from embarrassment can cause impotence and pain. The company that manufactures the drug, Auxilium Pharmaceuticals Inc.  of Malvern, Pa., said it hopes to have approval from the Food and Drug Administration to market the drug for this purpose by the end of the year.

In another major setback for efforts to develop an HIV vaccine, federal researchers have shut down a key clinical trial after an independent panel of safety experts determined that volunteers who got an experimental vaccine appeared to be slightly more likely to contract the human immunodeficiency virus than those who got a placebo. Investigators involved in recruiting volunteers and running the trial at 21 sites across the country were ordered Tuesday morning to stop immunizing volunteers with the genetically engineered HVTN 505 vaccine and to inform the nearly 2,500 people who participated in the study whether they got the vaccine or the placebo.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using the supplement nitric oxide? Richard Sunland Nitric oxide is a gas naturally found in the body; its function is conveying information between cells. One of its main jobs is increasing blood flow by dilating blood vessels, and that's why it's sometimes given in supplement form to heart patients, orally and intravenously. In at least one study it's been shown to be effective for lowering blood pressure.

A treatment that removes heavy metals from the body has long been touted as an alternative therapy to combat hardening arteries. Now a 10-year, $31-million clinical trial has found that chelation therapy does help heart attack patients slightly reduce their risk of serious heart problems - but not enough for the researchers to encourage mainstream cardiologists to offer it to their patients. The trial revealed a very modest benefit for patients who took chelation therapy rather than a placebo, according to results published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

More than 2 million American men have turned to saw palmetto extract to help alleviate the uncomfortable symptoms of having an enlarged prostate. It remains a popular herbal remedy despite the fact that a spate of clinical trials in the past 10 years have found its benefits to be limited at best. That may change once men learn about the results of a new trial published in Wednesday's edition of the Journal of the American Medical Assn. First, a primer on enlarged prostates.

Silymarin, an extract of milk thistle widely used around the world for treating liver disease caused by the hepatitis C virus, provides no more benefit than a placebo, researchers reported this week. Some estimates are that as many as a third of the estimated 3.2 million Americans with hepatitis C -- as well as many more millions around the world -- are consuming the drug in an effort to alleviate their symptoms. The new research by a team headed by Dr. Michael W. Fried of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine suggests that they are simply wasting their money.

To most people, the story of the placebo effect is simple: Because we believe that medicine makes us healthier, a pill - even if it is just sugar - causes us to feel better when we take it. As a result, the placebo effect has generally been considered a conscious process, the result of seeing the pill and the doctor in the white coat who gives it to us. But a new study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests...

Women with low sexual arousal who took a placebo drug showed an improvement in symtpoms, a new study finds. The 12-week double-blind study, published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine , followed 50 women who were diagnosed with female sexual arousal disorder and randomly given a placebo as part of a pharmaceutical trial sponsored by Eli Lilly/ICOS (the company agreed to release the results of those who took the placebo). The women in the study reported 1,292 sexual events during the 12-week trial.

Every day on the front lines of medicine, doctors quietly weigh treatments. They consider which ones might help patients and which ones might harm them. And sometimes, rightly or wrongly, which ones might simply please or appease them. I'm a pleaser at heart. My family and friends know it, and so do most of my patients. However, when I think about doctors dispensing prescriptions merely to please, I feel my gut wrench. I first witnessed placebo medicine in the 1970s. Back then, a few doctors at my university hospital treated patients with saline injections and little blue sugar pills.

Many people who suffer with lower back pain rely on glucosamine supplements for some relief. But does the stuff really work? A new study shows that glucosamine was no different from a placebo in treating lower back pain. The study, released Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., was a large, double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial that included 250 adults with chronic lower back pain. It was conducted at the Oslo University Outpatient Clinic in Norway. Chronic lower back pain plagues millions of people in the U.S., and treatments include physical therapy, medication and the use of glucosamine supplements.

This might be tough for parents who want to swoop in and fix their children's every problem, but a study found that half of the teenagers who screened positive for depression got better in six weeks without treatment. Two aspects of the teenagers' conditions seemed to predict whether the depression would ease without treatment: the severity of the symptoms and whether the symptoms persisted for six weeks, the researchers, led by Dr. Laura Richardson of Seattle Children's Research Institute, said in an article published this week in the journal Pediatrics.

Don't be fooled by some of the jargon of biomedical research: People who respond strongly to placebo medications are not dummies. A new study finds they tend to be people you would describe in much more favorable terms: straightforward, tough in the face of difficulty, and willing to lend others a hand. Maybe the people who don't respond well to placebos are the dummies: Angry, hostile and prone to negativity, these people seem far less capable of harnessing their minds to the task of healing their bodies, says the new research.

If you're trying to ward off the sniffles, you can take vitamin D supplements out of your shopping cart: A new study reports that dosing with the vitamin does nothing to prevent colds or other forms of upper respiratory tract infections (URTI). The effect of vitamin D on the immune system has been debated for a long time. Controlled laboratory research has shown that vitamin D has several beneficial effects on the immune system, and some studies conducted in the past have suggested that people with low levels of the vitamin are at higher risk for URTIs.

Acupuncture eases some kinds of chronic pain - and it's not just a placebo effect at work, researchers who looked at data from nearly 18,000 patients found. An estimated 3 million American adults get acupuncture treatments annually; still, there “remains considerable controversy as to its value,” the researchers wrote in a study published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine. But they found that for back and neck pain, chronic headache, osteoarthritis and shoulder pain, acupuncture works better than no treatment and better than “sham” acupuncture - done, for example, with needles inserted superficially or with needles that retract into the handles instead of going into the skin.

To most people, the story of the placebo effect is simple: Because we believe that medicine makes us healthier, a pill - even if it is just sugar - causes us to feel better when we take it. As a result, the placebo effect has generally been considered a conscious process, the result of seeing the pill and the doctor in the white coat who gives it to us. But a new study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests...

Studies in macaques have for the first time shown that an intravaginal ring laced with an anti-HIV drug can block transmission of HIV during sexual intercourse. Researchers at the Population Council who demonstrated the product are now refining drug concentrations and contents of the ring and hope to begin human trials within 18 to 24 months. Previous studies with vaginal microbicides to block HIV have produced mixed results, with at least one showing some protection and another showing none.

The smoking-cessation drug Chantix may work better if people take it several weeks before trying to quit, a new study has found. Chantix, or varenicline, appears to soothe withdrawal symptoms related to quitting while reducing the urge to smoke. People usually take the drug beginning one week before their targeted "quit date. " In the new study, however, researchers in England gave the medication to 53 people beginning four weeks before their quit date and throughout the remainder of the three-month cessation period.

Depression increasingly looks to researchers and clinicians like, say, a psychiatric version of bronchitis or a heart attack. Some people come down with a case of it, have it treated (or not), and it goes away. But for a great number of patients, it's a chronic condition that must be treated when it flares. And after depression's acute symptoms subside, many patients need to manage the disease -- to continue with some kind of treatment -- to reduce the likelihood of experiencing repeated bouts of mental suffering.

Silymarin, an extract of milk thistle widely used around the world for treating liver disease caused by the hepatitis C virus, provides no more benefit than a placebo, researchers reported this week. Some estimates are that as many as a third of the estimated 3.2 million Americans with hepatitis C -- as well as many more millions around the world -- are consuming the drug in an effort to alleviate their symptoms. The new research by a team headed by Dr. Michael W. Fried of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine suggests that they are simply wasting their money.

A drug already on the market to treat severely clenched fingers may also be useful in treating the excessively curved penis caused by Peyronie's disease, researchers reported Monday. If the findings are validated in larger trials, the drug, called Xiaflex, could become the first effective medical treatment for the condition, which apart from embarrassment can cause impotence and pain. The company that manufactures the drug, Auxilium Pharmaceuticals Inc.  of Malvern, Pa., said it hopes to have approval from the Food and Drug Administration to market the drug for this purpose by the end of the year.