Hacking the Placebo Effect with Luana Colloca, MD, PhD, MS

Luana Colloca, MD, Ph.D., MS, is a physician-scientist, professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, Director of the TL1 program, Chair of the Pain and Placebo Special Interest Group for the International Association for Study of Pain Society (IASP), and steering member and treasurer for the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies of Placebo (SIPS). Prof. Colloca holds an MD, a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, and a masters in Bioethics.

 

She completed a post-doc training at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and a senior research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, USA.  Prof. Colloca received several prestigious awards such as the IASP Wall Patrick Award for basic research on pain mechanisms. Prof Colloca leads an NIH-funded research portfolio on endogenous pain modulation including placebo/nocebo effects and other nonpharmacological interventions such as virtual reality at the School of Nursing, University of Maryland, Baltimore. 

 

We talk about the placebo effect and its evil twin, the nocebo effect, and the dicey ethical territory that comes with recommending an intervention that you know only works if the placebo effect occurs. We also discuss the ethical dilemma of the nocebo effect, in which we prime patients to feel more pain by warning them about impending pain.

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