{"id":1022,"date":"2016-04-14T13:37:03","date_gmt":"2016-04-14T13:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmjebmspotlight\/?p=1022"},"modified":"2017-08-21T10:57:36","modified_gmt":"2017-08-21T10:57:36","slug":"primary-care-corner-with-geoffrey-modest-md-another-blog-on-the-power-of-placebos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmjebmspotlight\/2016\/04\/14\/primary-care-corner-with-geoffrey-modest-md-another-blog-on-the-power-of-placebos\/","title":{"rendered":"Primary Care Corner with Geoffrey Modest MD: Another Blog on the Power of Placebos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Dr. Geoffrey Modest<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Again, I was dusting off old medical articles and saved another from the recycle bin, this one revealing that the profound effect of medication adherence (whether a med or placebo) leads to improved outcomes (see\u00a0Lancet2005; 366: 2005). The CHARM trials (all published in the September 3, 2003 issue of Lancet)\u00a0were a multinational set of trials from 618 sites in 26 countries, enrolling\u00a0adult patients with symptomatic heart failure (NYHA class II-IV): the CHARM-Alternative trial had patients with low left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF\u00a0\u2264\u200b40%) who did not tolerate an ACE-inhibitor; the CHARM-Added trial had patients with LVEF\u00a0\u226440 and taking\u00a0an ACE-I; and the CHARM-Preserved included patients with a preserved LVEF (i.e. &gt;40%)\u00a0with or without ACE-I. All were randomized to candasartan vs placebo. Overall, each of these studies found efficacy for candasartan (though in the\u00a0CHARM-Preserved\u200b one it was limited to a decrease of 16% for heart failure\u00a0hospital admissions; the others showed benefit in cardiovascular deaths of about 20% as well as heart failure admissions of 17-39%). But in the current study, done by the CHARM investigators, they looked at the effect of good medication adherence\u00a0and clinical outcomes.<\/p>\n<p>Details:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>7599 patients with heart failure (69% men, 45% NYHA class II\/52% class III, 71% had recent heart failure admission, mean LVEF in those with systolic dysfunction was 29% and in the study with preserved LVEF was 54%), median follow-up of 38 months<\/li>\n<li>Results, controlling for a variety of parameters, including age, sex, LVEF, NYHA class, number of meds, smoking, blood pressure:<\/li>\n<li>89% of the patients were &#8220;good adherers&#8221;\u00a0(patients taking &gt;80% of their assigned meds, whether candasartan or placebo); 11% were &lt;80% med adherent<\/li>\n<li>Good adherence\u00a0was associated 35% decrease in all-cause mortality [HR 0.65 (0.57-0.75), p&lt;0.001]<\/li>\n<li><strong>There was NO DIFFERENCE if patients were in the candasartan vs placebo wing!!<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>For candasartan, good adherers had\u00a0a\u00a034% decrease\u00a0in all-cause mortality [HR 0.66 (0.55-0.81), p&lt;0.001]<\/li>\n<li>For placebo,\u00a0good adherers had a\u00a036% decrease\u00a0in all-cause mortality [HR 0.64 (0.53-0.78), p&lt;0.001]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, what does this mean???<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There may well be very important differences in those who take their meds regularly vs those who don&#8217;t. This study did control for the anticipated demographic and medical\u00a0differences (blood pressure, etc.) which could explain this variance. But there certainly may be very important other\u00a0variables\u00a0not controlled for,\u00a0including\u00a0psychosocial variables (e.g. depression, social isolation, life stressors, etc.)\u00a0that could affect clinical outcomes.<\/li>\n<li>But, given the limitations of this\u00a0retrospective analysis, are there other possible explanations?<\/li>\n<li>Candasartan and perhaps all angiotensin receptor\u00a0blockers really don&#8217;t do much and really\u00a0are no better than placebo, and we have been hoodwinked yet again. Though, of note,\u00a0other studies (e.g. the Coronary Drug Project and the Beta Blocker in Heart Attack Trial) also found lower mortality in those adherent to placebos, though this was not found in the Lipids Research Clinics Primary Prevention Trial.<\/li>\n<li>\u200bPoor medication adherence to candasartan could also mean poor adherence to other meds or therapies\u00a0that are even more important clinically.<\/li>\n<li>The people who take their meds regularly\u00a0are probably the subgroup more likely to have positive expectations about treatment and are more likely to have\u00a0a placebo response.\u00a0Since one of the\u00a0recent emails has not yet been posted\u00a0on the website, I\u00a0will excerpt a relevant section: &#8220;one interesting study found, not surprisingly, that people who had positive expectation of treatment had a much higher placebo response than those with negative expectations (see\u00a0Science Translational Medcine 2011; 70(3):70ra14). And, in this study,\u00a0subjects\u00a0exposed to experimental heat pain\u200b but had a\u00a0negative expectancy\u200b did have some\u00a0benefit from an infusion of\u00a0a\u00a0m-opioid agonist remifentanil; but, when they\u00a0thought the infusion had stopped, they had\u00a0a full restoration of\u00a0pain intensity.\u200b\u201di.e., this study found that even with continued infusion of a potent opiate in\u00a0those with negative expectation of benefit, they reported lack of effect when they thought the infusion stopped&#8230;.)\u200b<\/li>\n<li>So, are there practical implications for this study?\n<ul>\n<li>\u200bMy (anecdotal) experience is that patients take their meds more consistently when I present the value of the med more enthusiastically. And I think there are important\u00a0ways to involve patients more in their care and improve medication adherence\u00a0(e.g., making sure that we incorporate the patient&#8217;s own approach to care to the extent we think appropriate or\u00a0at least not harmful, making sure the patient understands and can verbalize him\/herself what the goals of treatment are, asking the patient what their concerns are &#8212; which ironically may be increased\u00a0when they see TV ads which highlight the potential adverse effects of meds, having a check-in visit or phone call to see if there are any problems with the meds, involving the patient more in self-care\u2014e.g. checking their own blood pressure at the pharmacy,\u00a0making sure there are no obstacles to care &#8212; insurance copays, etc. etc.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>But, of course, I have no data to show that any of these interventions would equalize the effects of\u00a0placebo vs active meds as in the study, though I do\u00a0think they at least\u00a0help\u00a0reinforce the general therapeutic\u00a0effect of a strong clinician-patient relationship\u200b.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Also regarding placebos,\u00a0a recent blog (<a href=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmjebmspotlight\/2015\/05\/07\/primary-care-corner-with-geoffrey-modest-md-placebo-genetics-and-the-placebome\/\">https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmjebmspotlight\/2015\/05\/07\/primary-care-corner-with-geoffrey-modest-md-placebo-genetics-and-the-placebome\/<\/a>\u00a0)\u00a0notes that there may well be a strong role for genetics in determining the placebo response.\u200b\u200b<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Primary Care Corner with Geoffrey Modest MD: Another Blog on the Power of Placebos  [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmjebmspotlight\/2016\/04\/14\/primary-care-corner-with-geoffrey-modest-md-another-blog-on-the-power-of-placebos\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14283],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmjebmspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmjebmspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmjebmspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmjebmspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmjebmspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmjebmspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmjebmspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmjebmspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmjebmspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}