Placeboeffekte in der Medizin: Ursachen, Mechanismen, Befunde

Placebo research has made considerable progress in recent decades. This article presents examples of results from three areas of placebo research: placebo effects in clinical efficacy trials, neurobiological mechanisms of placebo effects, and the use of placebo effects in clinical practice. According to the present state of knowledge, placebo effects are neurobiological phenomena that play a role in almost every form of treatment and can modulate the effects. Decisive for the occurrence of placebo effects is the therapeutic context, which is formed by the characteristics of the patient, the treating physician, the patient-physician interaction, the setting and the type of intervention. Placebo effects occur mainly at the symptom level but are also observed in physiological systems. An exciting approach to using placebo effects in practice is the open-label administration of placebos, in which the patient is informed that the treatment does not contain any active ingredients.