Analgesic drug development had been plagued by an increase in the number of negative confirmatory chronic pain trials. Although the reasons for this are myriad, much attention has been focused on the increasingly high and variable placebo response. In his brief article, Henry J. Riordan at Worldwide Clinical Trials elucidates some of the factors that contribute to the heightened placebo response in trials of common chronic pain indications such as osteoarthritic pain, low back pain and neuropathic pain, and highlights manoeuvres to remedy this problem.
Watch 6 – Placebo