The Placebo Effect

Paper Summary:

This paper compares the two articles "Donepezil in Patients with Severe Alzheimer's Disease" by Winblad et al. and "A Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Study of Controlled Release Fluvoxamine for the Treatment of Generalized Social Anxiety Disorder" by H. Westenberg, D. Stein, H. Yang, D. Li and L. Barbato. It then contrasts these two papers with "The Placebo Effect in Neurological Disorders" by R. Fuentes-Fernandez, M. Schulzer and A.J. Stoessel. It focuses on the issue of the placebo effect and, more generally, on the question of biases and addressing them in the experimental method in three different research papers.

From the Paper:

"In conclusion, although a comparison of Westenberg et al. (2004) with Winblad et al. (2006) appeared to yield a number of similarities in terms of research design, subject matter (neurological states) and the strategies employed to address issues of biases and the placebo effect, nonetheless one key difference - the role of the funding source in influencing the sample selection and the results - distinguished the two. On the other hand, in contrasting Westenberg et al (2004) with Fuentes-Fernandez et al. (2002) we have seen how the former is an experimental study while the latter is a literature review. Despite this fundamental dissimilarity, however, there are interesting points of convergence between both works that merits comparative analysis."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Fuentes-Fernandez, R., Schulzer, M. and Stoessel, A.J. (2002). "The placebo effect in neurological disorders." The Lancet Neurology, 1: pp.85-91.
• Westenberg, H., Stein, D., Yang, H., Li, D., and Barbato, L. (2004). "A Double-blind placebo-controlled study of controlled release Fluvoxamine for the treatment of generalized social anxiety disorder." Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology, 24,1: pp.49-55.
• Winblad, B., Kilander, L., Eriksson, S., Minthon, L., Batsman, S., Wetterholm, A., Jansson-Blixt, C., Haglund, A. (2006). "Donepezil in patients with severe Alzheimer's disease: Double-blind, parallel-group placebo-controlled study." The Lancet, 367, 9516: pp.1057-1065.

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