Clinical therapeutics
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Clinical therapeutics · Mar 2017
ReviewA Review of the Theoretical and Biological Understanding of the Nocebo and Placebo Phenomena.
Placebos are commonly used in experimental and patient populations and are known to influence treatment outcomes. The mechanism of action of placebos has been investigated by several researchers. This review investigates the current knowledge regarding the theoretical and biological underpinning of the nocebo and placebo phenomena. ⋯ Further research is needed to fully understand the underpinnings of the nocebo and placebo phenomena. Neurobiology pathways need to be investigated in experimental paradigms that model the placebo response to a broader range of pathologies. Similarly, although many psychological factors and inter-individual characteristics have been identified as significant mediators and moderators of nocebo and placebo responses, the factors identified to date are unlikely to be exhaustive.
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Clinical therapeutics · Mar 2017
ReviewUnsolved, Forgotten, and Ignored Features of the Placebo Response in Medicine.
We aimed to identify topics of research that have been neglected, undervalued, or overseen in the past 2 decades of placebo/nocebo research. ⋯ The biggest threat for placebo research is that it may outdate itself by declaring all and everything as a placebo effect even if there may be better terms and concepts (eg, patient expectations, doctor-patient communication, empathy), and by ignoring that medicine continuously changes its face, for patients as well as for clinical researchers. Its biggest opportunity is the fact that it, as no other topic in medicine, requires both medical and psychological experts for its exploration and to stay updated.
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Clinical therapeutics · Feb 2017
Factors Associated with the Use of Hyaluronic Acid and Corticosteroid Injections among Patients with Radiographically Confirmed Knee Osteoarthritis: A Retrospective Data Analysis.
Despite the rapid proliferation of hyaluronate (HA) and corticosteroid (CO) injections and clinical guidelines regarding their use in osteoarthritis (OA), information on the characteristics of people receiving these injections is scarce. We describe the use of injections among adults with radiographically confirmed knee OA and identify factors associated with injection use. ⋯ The receipt of HA or CO injection may be associated with higher socioeconomic positioning and indicators of greater disease severity in patients with knee OA.
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Clinical therapeutics · Feb 2017
Target Intestinal Microbiota to Alleviate Disease Progression in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.
Emerging evidence has demonstrated that gut microbiome plays essential roles in the pathogenesis of human diseases in distal organs. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease characterized by the progressive loss of motor neurons. Treatment with the only drug approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for use in ALS, riluzole, extends a patient׳s life span by only a few months. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop novel interventions that for alleviate disease progression and improve quality of life in patients with ALS. Here we present evidence that intestinal dysfunction and dysbiosis may actively contribute to ALS pathophysiology. ⋯ The findings from this study highlight the complex role of the gut microbiome and intestinal epithelium in the progression of ALS and present butyrate as a potential therapeutic reagent for restoring ALS-related dysbiosis.
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Clinical therapeutics · Jan 2017
Predictive Modeling of Response to Pregabalin for the Treatment of Neuropathic Pain Using 6-Week Observational Data: A Spectrum of Modern Analytics Applications.
This post hoc analysis used 11 predictive models of data from a large observational study in Germany to evaluate potential predictors of achieving at least 50% pain reduction by week 6 after treatment initiation (50% pain response) with pregabalin (150-600 mg/d) in patients with neuropathic pain (NeP). ⋯ The finding that pain changes by week 1 or weeks 1 and 3 are the best predictors of pregabalin response at 6 weeks suggests that adhering to a pregabalin medication regimen is important for an optimal end-of-treatment outcome. Regarding baseline predictors alone, considerable published evidence supports the importance of high baseline pain score and presence of depression as factors that can affect treatment response. Future research would be required to elucidate why using pregabalin as a monotherapy also had more than a 10% variable importance as a potential predictor.