From Science Daily – Placebos are a sham — usually mere sugar pills designed to represent “no treatment” in a clinical treatment study. The effectiveness of the actual medication is compared with the placebo to determine if the medication works.
…Now, researchers at UCLA have found a new explanation: genetics. Dr. Andrew Leuchter, a professor of psychiatry at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, and colleagues report that in people suffering from major depressive disorder, or MDD, genes that influence the brain’s reward pathways may modulate the response to placebos. The research appears in the August edition of the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology.
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