ArticlePain reports
How to prevent, minimize, or extinguish nocebo effects in pain: a narrative review on mechanisms, predictors, and interventions.
Article in Pain reports. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers, 4 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
36 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Negative expectations and measurable movement mechanics: a scoping review of the nocebo effect on motor performance.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Pooled it
- Mitigating the Nocebo Effect in Biosimilar Use and Switching: A Systematic Review.Pharmaceutical medicine · 2024Pooled it
- Nocebo effects in systemic therapies for adult plaque psoriasis: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in medicine · 2024Pooled it
- The Nocebo Effect: A Review of Contemporary Experimental Research.International journal of behavioral medicine · 2022Pooled it
- Nocebo expectations rather than placebo expectations affect topical pain relief: A randomized clinical trial.Biomedicine & pharmacotherapy = Biomedecine & pharmacotherapie · 2024Trial
- Informed Consent for Placebo-Controlled Trials: Do Ethics and Science Conflict?Ethics & human research · 2022Trial
- Expectancies as predictors of symptom improvement after antimicrobial therapy for persistent symptoms attributed to Lyme disease.Clinical rheumatology · 2021Trial
- Learning mechanisms in nocebo hyperalgesia: the role of conditioning and extinction processes.Pain · 2020Trial
- Impact of medication side effects on medication adherence and implications for treatment outcomes in patients with borderline personality disorder: a pilot study.BMC psychiatry · 2026Article
- Cholecystokinin input from the anterior cingulate cortex to the lateral periaqueductal gray mediates nocebo pain behavior in mice.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Observational
- Article
- Identifying the psychological effects of nocebo education: results from two pre-registered experiments.Journal of behavioral medicine · 2024Article
- Development and validation of the General attitude towards Medication Questionnaire (GAMQ).BMC psychology · 2024Article
- Findings Consistent with a Breast Implant-associated Somatic System Disorder (BIA-SSD) Among Patients Self-reporting Breast Implant Illness.Plastic and reconstructive surgery. Global open · 2024Article
- Symptoms before and after COVID-19: a population and case-control study using prospective data.The European respiratory journal · 2024Article
- Risk factors associated with nocebo effects: A review of reviews.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2024Review
- When describing harms and benefits to potential trial participants, participant information leaflets are inadequate.Trials · 2024Article
- Landau model for illustrating the learning and unlearning process of nociplastic pain.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Pharmacogenetic testing and counselling in the community pharmacy: mixed-methods study of a new pharmacist-led service.International journal of clinical pharmacy · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Nocebo effects, such as side effects due to negative expectations regarding the pain treatment, are a concern for health care providers and come with significant costs. This narrative review focuses on underlying mechanisms and possible factors that contribute to the susceptibility to the nocebo effect on pain and related outcomes and suggests strategies that can prevent, minimize, or extinguish nocebo effects in clinical settings. Nocebo effects are the result of psychological (eg, conditioning, verbal suggestions, and observational learning) and neurobiological (eg, cholecystokinin and dopamine regulation) mechanisms. Evidence from clinical and experimental studies lead to various recommendations and strategies to alter the nocebo effect in order to optimize pain treatments, such as providing patients with enhanced information, optimizing patient-physician communication and relationships, and offering psychoeducation on coping skills in order to manage patient expectations. The current literature from both clinical and experimental studies provides a better understanding of the nocebo effect and possible factors that modulate its strength on treatment outcomes. This allows for the development of evidence-based strategies aimed at the prevention, minimization, and treatment of the nocebo effect in pain conditions and possible other somatic disorders.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.