Dr Roxana Siles: Blinded Trials Are Important When Evaluating Chronic Cough Treatment

Roxana Siles, MD, FAAAAI, staff in the Department of Allergy and Immunology at Cleveland Clinic and codirector of the Asthma Center at Cleveland Clinic, addresses why a placebo effect is often seen in clinical trials investigating the impact of chronic cough treatment and how this is addressed.

Transcript

How might the placebo effect impact in clinical trials for chronic cough treatment be overcome when testing a medication’s effectiveness?

The placebo effect is real, and it’s not uncommon for patients who enter clinical trials for treatment of cough that they go through rigorous evaluation and they really maximize the therapy. One thing that’s common in trials is that patients tend to be perhaps more adherent to the regimen because they are in trials and perhaps they’re being monitored more closely. So yes, it can be tricky. But certainly, this is why we have blinded, placebo-controlled [trials], because they will tell us whether or not an effective treatment despite having that placebo benefit is even that much more effective when it comes to statistical data and finding that it is a good comparison.