When a placebo is not a ‘placebo’: a placebo effect on postprandial glycaemia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
What is already known about this subject • Although placebo effects have been shown on subjective continuous variables such as pain, placebo effects on objective continuous variables remain uncertain. • The present, pilot, follow‐up investigation represents the first to assess a placebo effect on the objective continuous measurement of acute postprandial plasma glucose. What this study adds • Placebo effects may be operating on postprandial plasma glucose outcomes. • Cornstarch sources of placebo may decrease the plasma glucose response to a 75‐g oral glucose tolerance test, rendering them as positive controls when assessing postprandial outcomes. • Other carbohydrate sources used as placebos in research may show similar effects. Aims Placebo effects in clinical trials remain uncertain. To investigate a placebo effect on acute postprandial plasma glucose, we conducted a follow‐up investigation on a previous study. Methods The effect of placebo (9 g encapsulated cornstarch +500 ml water, taken at −40 min) on the plasma glucose response to a 75‐g oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) was assessed in a previous study in 12 healthy subjects (gender, five male, seven female; age 27 ± 6 years; body mass index 24 ± 3.4 kg m−2). This was compared with the effect of a water control (500 ml water taken alone at −40 min) on the same outcome in the same subjects in a follow‐up study. Results Cornstarch placebo decreased plasma glucose area under the curve during the 75‐g OGTT by 28% [Δ (95% confidence interval) −63.3 min mmol−1 l−1 (−218.33, 91.66), P < 0.02] compared with the water control (P < 0.05). Conclusions Postprandial plasma glucose outcomes may be vulnerable to placebo effects.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.044 | 0.100 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.008 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".