The placebo effect is so weird.
How does the power of placebo work?
Is it all in your head?
Well new research suggests it might all be in your genes.
Hey guys!
Julia here for DNews
The placebo effect fascinates me.
How can a sugar pill heal someone just with the power of belief?
This effect is probably the basis for a lot of ancient medicine.
Where spells, powders, and rituals ruled the day.
A lot of pomp and circumstance would certainly convince most people of the power of the medicine.
But it’s not just in the past.
Even today, most doctors admit to prescribing a placebo…
i mean, antibiotics for a cold!?
REALLY!?
but doctors aren’t dumb, they are just trying to make you feel better.
Maybe just going to the doctor, being in a doctor’s office, the whole shebang can make
you feel better, just like a healing ritual would have done thousands of years ago.
Even if it’s just all in your head.
But in some cases even knowing it’s a placebo doesn’t change the outcome.
One study published in PLOS One found that even if researchers say “this is a sugar
pill” and write placebo on the bottle, the patients reported improvement in their symptoms!
So it really does seem like the doctor-patient relationship has a lot to do with it.
But while placebos might seem like a magical cure, not everyone is susceptible to the effect.
In a review published in the journal Trends in Molecular Medicine, researchers from Beth
Israel Deaconess Medical Center and from Brigham and Women's Hospital introduce the idea of
a placebome.
Or the idea that your genes affect whether or not the placebo effect will work on you.
This could explain decades of strange results with placebos.
Not everyone responds to them.
Most research suggests that placebos improve health in both subjective and objective measures
in 30-40% of people.
While that’s still not most people, that’s a pretty large percentage.
One of the first studies to suggest a genetic link, was published in 2008, in the journal
Neuroscience.
The study found that placebos, in this case a sugar pill, worked in treating anxiety in
40% of the trial participants who got it.
The researchers found those who took the sugar pill had decreased activity in the amygdala,
suggesting that the placebo worked through the same mechanisms as the active drug in
the trial.
The study also analyzed genes that regulate serotonin in the brain.
The researchers found that only people with certain alleles or types of genes had that
regulation of activity in the amygdala.
In another study in 2012, one of the researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
found a specific gene which acts on dopamine in the brain.
She found that people with a different version of the gene responded differently to placebos.
Maybe because people with the different gene have different levels of dopamine available
in the prefrontal cortex.
Dopamine has been implicated in the “confirmation bias” feeling.
So maybe people with this gene expect the drug to work, so they look for confirmation
of this expectation.
So even if they are getting a sugar pill, the soothing words of the doctor confirms
their expectation that the drug will work.
It’ll certainly be an interesting area of research to keep an eye on.
And it raises a lot of issues like, it suggests that placebos run through the same neurotransmitters
as drug responses.
Which could have a huge impact on the way we research drugs.
Do placebos and drugs interact?
Should drug trials always include a “no-treatment” group?
So what do you think?
If placebos work, are they really that bad?
Sound off in the comments below.