Measuring the placebo effect in carpal tunnel syndrome
Randomised controlled trialHumans
- Design
- Randomised controlled trial
- Subjects
- 68 patients with mild to moderate carpal tunnel syndrome, randomised to palmitoylethanolamide or placebo
- Dose used in the study
- Palmitoylethanolamide or placebo; dose not in this abstract (see the same group's 2017 trial)
- Duration
- 2 months
- What was measured
- Pain VAS, Levine symptom severity and functional status scores, electromyography
What the authors reported
Both groups improved. The paper reports the placebo arm in detail: symptom severity fell 18 percent, function 12.5 percent and pain 20 percent on placebo alone. Differences between the arms reached significance on only a few items.
Limits of this study
A secondary analysis of the group's 2017 trial, written to quantify the placebo response. It shows that up to a fifth of the improvement seen in open-label carpal tunnel studies can occur with no active treatment. Authors declare no conflicts.
Source
PubMed 31993783 · doi:10.1186/s10195-019-0540-4
Entry checked against the abstract on PubMed on 2026-09-22. The dose shown is the dose the researchers used. It is not a recommendation. How to read this page.