The Impact of Perceived Treatment Assignment on Smoking Cessation Outcomes Among African-American Smokers

Perceived treatment, feedback, and placebo effects in double-blind RCTs: an experimental analysis

“…Furthermore, the experiments showed that participants who believed they received active treatment demonstrated better cognitive performance than those who believed they received the placebo. This is consistent with the association between beliefs and treatment response found in several RCT studies that have asked whether participants believed that they had received the treatment or the placebo (Bausell et al 2005;Colagiuri et al 2009;Dar et al 2005;Lewis et al 1975;McRae et al 2004;Thomas et al 2008), but again this is the first study to show this by experimentally manipulating perceived treatment within a double-blind RCT setting. Importantly, the inclusion of the no treatment control groups in Experiment 2 found that, while positive feedback improved cognitive performance in the double-blind condition, it led to worse performance in the no treatment condition.…”

“…The third major advantage was the use of an objective outcome measure since the majority of studies assessing the relationship between perceived treatment and therapeutic outcome have been based on subjective outcomes, including the example described above (Colagiuri et al 2009). In fact, to our knowledge, the only exception to this is Thomas et al (2008); in this study, higher rates of smoking cessation in participants who believed they had received active treatment were verified by assessing carbon monoxide and cotinine plasma levels.…”

“…However, researchers conducting double-blind RCTs rarely assess whether blinding has been maintained and, when they do, it is often found to have failed (Fergusson et al 2004;Hróbjartsson et al 2007;Karanicolas et al 2008). A number of re-analyses of trials in which participants were asked about whether they believed they were given active treatment or placebo have shown a strong relationship between perceived treatment and therapeutic outcome (Bausell et al 2005;Dar et al 2005;Lewis et al 1975;McRae et al 2004; Thomas et al 2008). For example, we re-analyzed a trial of acamprosate and naltrexone for alcohol dependence that had failed to detect an effect of either treatment over placebo (Morley et al 2006) in terms of whether participants believed they had received active treatment or a placebo.…”

Smokers’ Treatment Expectancies Predict Smoking Cessation Success

“…Moreover, the findings add to our understanding of perceptions of treatment assignment in smoking cessation clinical trials (Schnoll et al, 2008; Thomas et al, 2008). Smokers’ treatment perceptions may be the result of self-fulfilling treatment expectancies that are formed prior to actual treatment exposure.…”

Perceived Treatment Assignment and Smoking Cessation in a Clinical Trial of Bupropion Versus Placebo

“…However, only two studies investigated the impact of perceived treatment assignment on smoking abstinence in doubleblind, randomized, clinical trials of bupropion (Schnoll et al, 2008;Thomas et al, 2008). Both trials included smokers who consumed at least 10 cigarettes per day (cpd).…”