ArticleClinical pharmacology and therapeutics2024
Transcriptomic Profiles Associated with Experimental Placebo Effects in Chronic Pain.
Article in Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- A narrative review of the placebo effect: historical roots, current applications, and emerging insights.European journal of clinical pharmacology · 2025Review
- Predicting Treatment Outcomes in Patients with Low Back Pain Using Gene Signature-Based Machine Learning Models.Pain and therapy · 2025Article
- Clinical neuroscience and neurobiology of placebo and nocebo effects.International review of neurobiology · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Gene expression networks associated with placebo effects are understudied; in this study, we identified transcriptomic profiles associated with placebo responsivity. Participants suffering from chronic pain underwent a verbal suggestion and conditioning paradigm with individually tailored thermal painful stimulations to elicit conditioned placebo effects. Participants reported pain intensity on a visual analog scale (VAS) anchored from zero = no pain to 100 = maximum imaginable pain. RNA was extracted from venous blood and RNA sequencing and validation tests were performed to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) associated with placebo effects, controlling for sex and level of pain. Unbiased enrichment analyses were performed to identify biological processes associated with placebo effects. Of the 10,700 protein-coding genes that passed quality control filters, 667 were found to be associated with placebo effects (FDR <0.05). Most genes (97%) upregulated were associated with larger placebo effects. The 17 top transcriptome-wide significant genes were further validated via RT-qPCR in an independent cohort of chronic pain participants. Six of them (CCDC85B, FBXL15, HAGH, PI3, SELENOM, and TNFRSF4) showed positive and significant (P < 0.05) correlation with placebo effects in the cohort. The overall DEGs were highly enriched in regulation of expression of SLITs and ROBOs (R-HSA-9010553, FDR = 1.26e-33), metabolism of RNA (R-HSA-8953854, FDR = 1.34e-30), Huntington's disease (hsa05016, FDR = 9.84e-31), and ribosome biogenesis (GO:0042254, FDR = 2.67e-15); alternations in these pathways might jeopardize the proneness to elicit placebo effects. Future studies are needed to replicate this finding and better understand the unique molecular dynamics of people who are more or less affected by pain and placebo.
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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.