Scientists at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) have identified for the first time the region in the brain responsible for the “placebo effect” in pain relief, when a fake treatment actually results in substantial reduction of pain.
Pinpointing the sweet spot of the pain-killing placebo effect could result in the design of more personalized medicine for the 100 million Americans with chronic pain. The finding also will lead to more precise and accurate clinical trials for pain medications by eliminating individuals with high placebo response before trials.
The study was published in the journal PLOS Biology.
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002570
Source & further reading:
http://news.feinberg.northwestern.edu/2016/10/sweet-spot-for-pain-relief-identified/
Image:
The yellow and red sections of this brain image show the unique brain region — the mid-frontal gyrus — which Northwestern scientists discovered is responsible for placebo response in pain relief.
Corina Marinescu
No comments:
Post a Comment