Placebo is not a “sugar pill” but the result of stimulation of neural networks involved in central analgesia and in mood regulation

Abstract

<div>Placebo was intended as a pill devoid of any active principle <span style="font-size: 10px;">capable to influence or relieve so called psychosomatic diseases. </span><span style="font-size: 10px;">More recently, it has been shown that placebo can be useful in </span><span style="font-size: 10px;">surgical practice. In fact, sham operation can induce significant</span></div><div>benefit. Emotions have been shown to play a pivotal role in placebo. <span style="font-size: 10px;">Present observation concerns an attempt to investigate and </span><span style="font-size: 10px;">therapeutically use scientific evidences in a placebo devoted to </span><span style="font-size: 10px;">sufferers from chronic migraine pain. The present approach has its</span></div><div>background in the fact that placebo analgesia has been shown to <span style="font-size: 10px;">largely consist either in the activation both of analgesia pathways </span><span style="font-size: 10px;">and of emotional systems as well as genetic and epigenetic </span><span style="font-size: 10px;">expressions leading to specific behavior. In this perspective </span><span style="font-size: 10px;">placebo has been used to empower a conventional therapy that</span></div><div>was scored as unsatisfactory by the enrolled chronic migraine <span style="font-size: 10px;">sufferers. Here proposed placebo seems to transform an ineffective </span><span style="font-size: 10px;">drug therapy into an effective pain relieving approach.</span></div>