'Expensive' placebo beats 'cheap' one in Parkinson's disease: study

By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - When patients with Parkinson's disease received an injection described as an effective drug costing $1,500 per dose, their motor function improved significantly more than when they got one supposedly costing $100, scientists reported on Wednesday. The research, said an editorial in the journal Neurology, which published it, "takes the study of placebo effect to a new dimension." More and more studies have documented the power of placebos, in which patients experience an improvement in symptoms despite receiving sugar pills, sham surgery, or other intervention with no intrinsic therapeutic value. Earlier studies have shown that patients' expectations can lead to improvements in Parkinson's, a progressive motor disease in which the brain's production of dopamine plummets. As it happens, dopamine release is increased by belief, novelty, and the expectation of reward - mental states that underlie placebo effects, said neurologist Alberto Espay of the University of Cincinnati, who led the new study.



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