ReviewOsteoarthritis and cartilage open2026
Magnitude of the placebo response across non-surgical treatment modalities used for knee osteoarthritis: A meta-analysis with meta-regression.
Review in Osteoarthritis and cartilage open, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
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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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objective: To quantify pain-related placebo responses across treatment modalities in placebo-controlled clinical trials of non-surgical osteoarthritis interventions. Design: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published since January 2008 was conducted in accordance with PRISMA guidelines. Searches of the PubMed and Embase databases were conducted through May 2025. Hedges' g was calculated as the effect size for pre-to-post change in pain outcomes using a random-effects model. Heterogeneity was assessed using the I Results: One hundred and seventy-nine RCTs were included. Four trials also included a no-treatment arm. A Hedges' g of 0.5 or greater for improvement from baseline was observed in the placebo arm of 109 (60%) trials, while 15 (8%) reported worsening. Substantial heterogeneity was present (I Conclusion: Most trials reported moderate to large effect sizes for improvement in the placebo group. Treatment modality did not significantly affect outcomes and most of the variance in the placebo response remained unexplained. Important limitations include substantial statistical heterogeneity, the lack of data on psychological variables and few trials with a no-treatment group.
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