I'm probably not the only person with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia to utter the lame joke: "As long as it's working, I don't care if it is a placebo effect!"

A joke is one thing. It's nice to know that the reality is something else entirely. In fact, after pooling the data of 29 studies in which 1,016 people with CFS received various placebos, a new study suggests that if you have CFS, and a treatment does make you feel better, the odds are against it being a placebo effect.

Because the placebo effect usually occurs most often in those who have a diseases with highly subjective symptoms, some medical professionals thought it could be as high as 50% among CFS patients. Across the board, 30% is generally accepted as the placebo effect average among all conditions. However, in the study reported in Psychosomatic Medicine, pooled placebo response among those with CFS was a mere 19.6%. The study also showed that the placebo response was only 24% for medical interventions and dropped to only 14% for psychiatric/psychological treatments.

Additional information:

Abstract: The Placebo Response in the Treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Hyong Jin Cho, MD, Matthew Hotopf, PhD and Simon Wessely, MD
From the Section of General Hospital Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, United Kingdom.

Chronic Fatigue Patients Show Lower Response to Placebos