SUMMARY The expectation of pain relief can exert a powerful analgesic effect, even when pain is severe. Depending on the nature of experiences and instructions provided, a placebo analgesic effect can be elicited acutely in a very large percentage of individuals, in both experimental and clinical contexts. Placebo analgesia has been linked with activity in the prefrontal cortex, endogenous opio...

background: clinical trial is the standard method to assess efficacy of a medical intervention. because of its experimental nature, meaning that subjects are exposed to an intervention with uncertain outcome and according to historical evidences of criminal researches, clinical trial is of something of a lightning rod for ethical concerns. ethical issues surrounding clinical trials are very per...

background and aim: probing is the only reliable method for diagnosing periodontal diseases; however, it is a painful examination. the purpose of this study was evaluation of the effect of emla anesthetic gel on the level of pain upon probing in patients with chronic periodontitis referring to the periodontology department of the dental branch of islamic azad university of tehran during 2013-20...

We present empirical evidence that the distribution of effort required to solve CSPs randomly generated at the 50% satisfiable point, when using a backtracking algorithm, can be approximated by two standard families of continuous probability distribution functions. Solvable problems can be modelled by the Weibull distribution, and unsolvable problems by the lognormal distribution. These distrib...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS In previous phase III studies, the PCSK9 monoclonal antibody alirocumab was administered at doses of 75 or 150 mg every 2 weeks (Q2W). CHOICE I (NCT01926782) evaluated 300 mg every 4 weeks (Q4W) in patients on either maximally tolerated statin or no statin, both ± other lipid-lowering therapies. METHODS CHOICE I included patients with hypercholesterolemia at moderate-to-ve...

Oral food challenges still remain the gold standard in the diagnosis of food related symptoms and are performed to obtain a clear “yes or no” response. However, this is often difficult to achieve, and so proposals may be appropriate for criteria on when to stop oral food challenges and declare a challenge as positive or negative. In daily practice it makes sense to challenge until clear objecti...

In the phase 2 CELEST study, positive efficacy results were obtained with Janus kinase 1 inhibitor upadacitinib for adult patients moderate to severe Crohn’s disease. We present health-related quality of life and work productivity improvement from CELEST. (NCT02365649) was a double-blind study where randomized 1:1:1:1:1:1 in 16-week induction period placebo or 3 mg twice daily (BID), 6 BID, 12 ...