The placebo effect can be boosted chemically, according to US News.
Scientists have long grappled with the implications of the placebo effect, in which subjects experience the impacts of a drug or experiment simply because researchers encouraged them. The results of the latest study mean researchers may finally be able to put the phenomena to practical use.
German researchers found that oxytocin, a hormone that creates feelings of bonding and trust, enhances the placebo effect. They're one of only a few groups of scientists to study and demonstrate how the placebo effect can be boosted, US News reported.
Lead researcher Dr. Ulrike Bingel pointed out that not everyone experiences the placebo effect to the same degree. In particular, he wants to use the findings of the study to target those who have a more difficult time channeling those feeling of goodwill and confidence associated with the placebo group, US News reported.
"Some people have very large placebo effects and others don't, and it would be very nice to have a pharmaceutical option to help people who are not so good at producing placebo analgesia on their own to compliment the standard medical treatment," Bingel said.
To test the effects of oxytocin, researchers created a classic placebo design and then measured the size of the effect depending on whether patients were given oxytocin or a control substance disguised as oxytocin before the experiment.
After subjects received their does of the actual hormone or the control substance, they had a pain relieving cream and a control cream (they were told had no effects) applied on their fore arms. (In reality neither possessed pain relieving properties.) Then, researchers ran a hot probe over both areas where the cream had been applied. Overall, subjects reported less pain when the hot probe touched the cream they believed to have cathartic properties than when it touched the control cream.
Subjects who received the oxytocin, however, were more easily influenced by the placebo effect, according to US News. They rated their level of pain five points lower (on a 100 point scale) for the "pain relieving cream" than the control group rated their pain for the same cream.
"What oxytocin seems to have done is to make people trust the clinician and to believe what they are saying is true," said Larry Young, director of the Conte Center for Oxytocin and Social Cognition at Emory University in Atlanta.
"Oxytocin helps create a connection between one individual and another," Young continued. "When you're looking another person in the eyes and you're really caring about the other person there, you're releasing oxytocin."
"I happen to believe that is one of the mechanisms creating the placebo effect in the first place," he said.
