As I was explaining a mother of a patient of mine about the placebo effect and why we should not use antibiotics on certain conditions, she asked for more information about the placebo effect on children. "i mean" she said "I agree with adults having the placebo effect, adolescentes as well, but what about the newborns? the toddlers?"
I was amuse by her willingness to learn more so I ran a fast search on the placebo effect on children and I would like to hear more opinions from the group (I know Ben Goldacre might be reading and he could have more info about it) as this is an excellent "heuristic" for this kind of questions. I tried pubmed using search strategy
("placebo response"[tiab] OR "placebo effect"[tiab]) AND (children OR child OR neonate OR newborn OR adolescent OR child OR pediatric)
but obviously the results were far beyond my other errands so I will check it later in detail.
Meanwhile, I found this excellent
systematic review evaluating the placebo effect in children with refractory epilepsy exposed to antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) or placebo
Surprisingly there was not only the placebo effect present, but it was almost 2 times stronger than in adults.
Another narrative review on the ADHD topic, where authors state the the "proxy placebo effect" might be present in ADHD studies. You can find it
here
Most of studies I´ve found have been performed in adolescents with neuropsychiatric conditions.
Does anyone have any information/studies of the placebo effect on newborns?
Cheers
PS. (NOTE): I MIGHT SHARE WITH THE EBM GROUP THE INFORMATION YOU SEND ME DIRECTLY IF I CONSIDER IT VALUABLE FROM THE ACADEMIC AND EDUCATIONAL POINT OF VIEW, UNLESS YOU SPECIFICALLY ASK ME TO KEEP THE INFORMATION CONFIDENTIAL (AND I WILL GLADLY DO IT) =)
--
Carlos A. Cuello-García, MD
Director, Centre for Evidence-Based MedicineTecnologico de Monterrey School of Medicine
Cochrane Collaboration Iberoamerican branch
CITES piso 3. Morones Prieto 3000 pte. Col. Doctores 64710
Monterrey, NL. Mexico.
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