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placebo
[ pl_uh_-see-boh plah-chey-boh ]
noun
, _plural pla·ce·bos, pla·ce·boes.
- a substance having no pharmacological effect but given merely to satisfy a patient who supposes it to be a medicine.
- a substance having no pharmacological effect but administered as a control in testing experimentally or clinically the efficacy of a biologically active preparation.
- Roman Catholic Church. the vespers of the office for the dead: so called from the initial word of the first antiphon, taken from Psalm 114:9 of the Vulgate.
/ pləˈsiːbəʊ /
noun
- med
an inactive substance or other sham form of therapy administered to a patient usually to compare its effects with those of a real drug or treatment, but sometimes for the psychological benefit to the patient through his believing he is receiving treatment
See also control group placebo effect - something said or done to please or humour another
- RC Church
a traditional name for the vespers of the office for the dead
/ plə-sē′bō /
A substance containing no medication and prescribed to reinforce a patient's expectation of getting well or used as a control in a clinical research trial to determine the effectiveness of a potential new drug.
A substance containing no active drug, administered to a patient participating in a medical experiment as a control.
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Notes
Those receiving a placebo often get better, a phenomenon known as the placebo effect .
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Word History and Origins
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Word History and Origins
Origin of placebo1
C13 (in the ecclesiastical sense): from Latin Placebo Domino I shall please the Lord (from the opening of the office for the dead); C19 (in the medical sense)
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Example Sentences
Proof of efficacy requires controlled studies in which some patients get plasma and others get a placebo.
If members of the placebo group contract covid-19 and members of the vaccinated group don’t, that indicates success.
They vaccinated volunteers and then, 24 hours later, gave them either the experimental antibody drug or a placebo.
A large number of people are given either the vaccine or a placebo and then sent back to live their lives, assuming that some of them, at some point, will be exposed to the virus.
Mice treated with a placebo drug or Brd4 inhibitor alone fared worse.
There is some scientific merit to some alternative modalities, such as the well-documented placebo effect.
After the surgery he discovered that he had simply drunk fruit juice with added sugar and he had been given a placebo.
Nobody conceived of a thing like the placebo effect or researcher bias —none of these notions had been worked out yet.
Those who had received the actual drug reported better levels of self-satisfaction than the unfortunates who just got the placebo.
The second is the placebo effect, which will often cause anything presented as medication to “work.”
It is a milder form of this same method to give what the learned faculty term a placebo.
We are interested in what makes the placebo act as effectively as the true medication.
This is a last phase of the metaphysical polity, and is only a kind of placebo.
Hence the complacent brother in the Marchant's Tale is called Placebo.'
We'll call this the placebo criticism and will come back to it, too, in a moment.