Trial reportJournal of general internal medicine2010
Placebo adherence and its association with morbidity and mortality in the studies of left ventricular dysfunction.
Trial report in Journal of general internal medicine, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Placebo administration for dry eye disease: a level I evidence based systematic review and meta-analysis.International journal of clinical pharmacy · 2022Pooled it
- Science of Salt: A regularly updated systematic review of salt and health outcomes studies (April to October 2018).Journal of clinical hypertension (Greenwich, Conn.) · 2019Pooled it
- A systematic review of the impact of adherence on the effectiveness of e-therapies.Journal of medical Internet research · 2011Pooled it
- Association of the magnitude of weight loss and changes in physical fitness with long-term cardiovascular disease outcomes in overweight or obese people with type 2 diabetes: a post-hoc analysis of the Look AHEAD randomised clinical trial.The lancet. Diabetes & endocrinology · 2016Trial
- Placebo adherence and mortality in the Heart and Estrogen/Progestin Replacement Study.The American journal of medicine · 2012Trial
- Adherence to placebo and mortality in the Beta Blocker Evaluation of Survival Trial (BEST).Contemporary clinical trials · 2012Trial
- Healing in a Social Context: The Importance of Clinician and Patient Relationship.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Follow-up tests and outcomes for patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention: analysis of a Japanese administrative database.Heart and vessels · 2019Article
- The neuroscience of placebo effects: connecting context, learning and health.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2015Review
- Causal inference methods to assess safety upper bounds in randomized trials with noncompliance.Clinical trials (London, England) · 2015Article
- Effectiveness of a focused, brief psychoeducation program for parents of ADHD children: improvement of medication adherence and symptoms.Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment · 2015Article
- Adherence, expectations and the placebo response: why is good adherence to an inert treatment beneficial?Psychology & health · 2014Article
- Intention-to-treat analyses and missing data approaches in pharmacotherapy trials for alcohol use disorders.BMJ open · 2013Article
- To adhere or not, and what we can do to help.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2012Article
- Adherence, placebo effects, and mortality.Journal of general internal medicine · 2010Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundA provocative finding from several double-blind clinical trials has been the association between greater adherence to placebo study medication and better health outcomes. We used data from the Studies of Left Ventricular Dysfunction (SOLVD) Treatment Trial (SOLVD-TT) and the SOLVD Prevention Trial (SOLVD-PT) to examine whether such associations could be validated and to examine several sources of bias and potential confounding.
methodsSurvival analytic methods were used to estimate the association between placebo adherence and several health outcomes, employing a number of modeling techniques to test for the existence of alternative explanations for the association. Higher adherence was defined as having taken ≥75% of prescribed study medication.
resultsHigher placebo adherence was associated with improved overall survival in both SOLVD-TT and SOLVD-PT [hazard ratio (HR) = 0.52, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.35 to 0.79 and HR = 0.52, 95%CI: 0.38 to 0.71, respectively]. Associations were similar for fatal or non-fatal cardiovascular or coronary heart disease events. Adjustment for both modifiable and non-modifiable cardiac risk factors (including age, gender, diabetes, blood pressure, smoking, weight, alcohol use, and levels of education) had minimal effect on the strength of the association. Little evidence of bias was found as an explanation for this relationship.
conclusionsIn these two trials, better adherence to placebo was associated with markedly superior health outcomes, including total in-study mortality and incident cardiovascular events. No important confounders were identified. These data suggest there may exist strong but unrecognized determinants of health outcomes for which placebo adherence is a marker.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.