ReviewFrontiers in psychiatry2020
"Placebo by Proxy" and "Nocebo by Proxy" in Children: A Review of Parents' Role in Treatment Outcomes.
Review in Frontiers in psychiatry, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- Acoustic stimulation for relieving pain during venipuncture: a systematic review and network meta-analysis.BMJ open · 2023Pooled it
- Trial
- Parental Expectations, Anxiety, and Health Behaviors in Routine Childhood Vaccination: Associations with Child Pain and Symptom Experiences.Journal of pediatrics. Clinical practice · 2026Article
- Attitudes of caregivers of children labeled with drug allergy after delabeling by provocation tests.Pediatric allergy and immunology : official publication of the European Society of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology · 2026Article
- Parental expectations and nocebo by proxy effects in adolescent orthodontic treatment outcomes.Scientific reports · 2026Observational
- Oral ATP treatment in alternating hemiplegia of childhood: a case report and review.Frontiers in medicine · 2024Article
- Upper crossed syndrome in secondary school students: A mixed-method study.Journal of Taibah University Medical Sciences · 2023Article
- Mediators of Placebo Response to Cannabinoid Treatment in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- Placebo: a brief updated review.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2022Review
- Enactive and simondonian reflections on mental disorders.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Bibliometric Properties of Placebo Literature From the JIPS Database: A Descriptive Study.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
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 at 3 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The "placebo (effect) by proxy" (PbP) concept, introduced by Grelotti and Kaptchuk (1), describes a positive effect of a patient's treatment on persons in their surrounding such as family members or healthcare providers, who feel better because the patient is being treated. The PbP effect is a complex dynamic phenomenon which attempts to explain a change in treatment outcome arising from an interaction between a patient and an effect from proxies such as parents, caregivers, physicians or even the media. By extension the effect of the proxy can also have a negative or adverse effect whereby a proxy feels worse when a patient is treated, giving rise to the possibility of a "nocebo (effect) by proxy" (NbP), and by extension can influence a patient's treatment response. While this has yet to be systematically investigated, such an effect could occur when a proxy observes that a treatment is ineffective or is perceived as causing adverse effects leading the patient to experience side effects. In this narrative review, we take these definitions one step further to include the impact of PbP/NbP as they transform to affect the treatment outcome for the patient or child being treated, not just the people surrounding the individual being treated. Following a systematic search of literature on the subject using the Journal of Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies (JIPS) database (https://jips.online) and PubMed (NCBI) resulted in very few relevant studies, especially in children. The effect of PbP
Indexed as
Identifiers
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.