The Man Who Overdosed on Placebo

The Nocebo effect, dramatically illustrated …

Several years ago, a published case study describes a 26-year-old man who was taken to the emergency room. After arguing with his ex-girlfriend, he attempted suicide by swallowing 29 capsules of an experimental drug that he obtained from a clinical trial that was testing a new antidepressant. When he arrived at the hospital, he was sluggish, shaking, and sweating and had rapid breathing. His blood pressure was extremely low at 80/40, and his pulse was 110.

Doctors were successful at raising his blood pressure. Over the course of four hours, they injected him with 6 liters of saline solution. His blood pressure increased to 100/62, which is at the lower end of the normal range, but his pulse remained high at 106.

What finally cured the patient wasn’t anything the emergency room staff did. Instead, a doctor from the clinical trial arrived at the hospital. He told the patient that those antidepressant pills weren’t antidepressants because he had been randomized into the control arm of the trial. Yes, that’s right: He overdosed on placebos.

Oh.

Within 15 minutes, the patient’s blood pressure stabilized at 126/80, and his heart rate dropped to a perfectly normal 80 beats per minute.

Read the entire article here.