Placebo Controlled Study

Placebo controlled studies involve a study design that assigns a placebo to the control arm of the study. The purpose of these studies is to assess for “placebo effects”. Results from therapeutic arms are compared to the placebo controlled arm to assess efficacy of the investigational intervention.

These studies are ideally double-blinded randomized trials to prevent the introduction of biases to the trial.

New drugs are required to be assessed in placebo controlled trials before they can be approved by government regulatory agencies.

Source: Source: Glossary of Common Site Terms – ClinicalTrials.gov. (n.d.). Clinicaltrials.Gov. Retrieved January 7, 2022, from https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/about-studies/glossary