The placebo effect would be particularly powerful if the patient is convinced that the treatment from which he benefits was designed especially for him, show work carried out at McGill University.
The strategy was particularly effective with participants who valued their individuality and who scored high on the need for uniqueness in psychological tests.
“We found that healthy participants who believe a treatment is personalized to their genetics find it more effective in reducing pain,” the paper’s lead author, Dasha Sandra, summed up recently. graduated with a Master of Science from the Integrated Program in Neuroscience at McGill.
The subjects were first subjected to a sensation of heat which, according to their individual threshold of pain tolerance, corresponded to a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10. They were then hooked up to a machine which was supposed to relieve this pain.
The machine, you guessed it, did no such thing. On the other hand, it had been designed to be convincing and to impress the participants with a believable spectacle of sound and light.
Even so, people who were told the device was configured according to their genetic make-up and physiology reported feeling less pain during the treatment than those who thought it was a normal treatment. .
This observation takes on a whole new importance at a time when “personalized medicine”, or “precision medicine” – namely, treatments developed according to the genetic particularities of the patient and his disease –, is more and more widespread.
“We wanted to see if other reasons could explain the effectiveness of these treatments, beyond their chemical effectiveness alone,” said Ms.me Sandra. We wanted to verify whether the mere belief that a treatment is personalized can improve its effectiveness. »
The study authors, she added, weren’t surprised to find that subjects who believed they would benefit from a personalized intervention reported getting greater relief from the machine.
On the other hand, they were intrigued by the fact that subjects who need “to feel unique or different from others” benefited even more than others.
That being said, there is quite a difference between easing a burning pain and attacking leukemia with a cocktail of drugs tailored to the patient and their cancer, admitted Ms.me Sandra.
The placebo effect alone, she said, “will not melt the tumor or affect the cancer itself. We are certainly not saying that personalized medicine in itself is a placebo”.
” But [l’effet placebo] could influence the subjective aspects of the treatment, on side effects such as nausea and fatigue, which greatly affect the quality of life,” added the researcher.
In other words, it would not be impossible for a patient treated for cancer to experience less severe side effects because they were told that would be the case with their personalized treatment, but more studies are needed. to check it.
” [L’effet placebo] could contribute a little to the positive outcome of the treatment […] and should be taken into account when developing or offering personalized treatments,” concluded Ms.me Sandra.
