ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 16, 1997 TAG: 9704160041
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW ORLEANS
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Not only did the 303 men taking flour pills for their prostates feel better, they really were doing better. - The placebo effect is not just a one-shot or even a 20-pill phenomenon: The brain's power to make us feel better can last for years.
A study found that flour pills used to test a drug for enlarged prostates were so effective that some men wanted to keep taking them after the two-year test was over - even though their condition, by at least one measure, was worse.
The new study involved 613 patients who were given either the Merck & Co. drug finasteride or a placebo.
``One of the things we noted was that the patients ... were continuing to do very well on placebo,'' said Dr. J. Curtis Nickel, lead author of the study. ``Some didn't want to stop taking the pills.''
So he and other doctors took a look at the 303 men who had been given flour pills. It wasn't just that they felt better; they really were doing better. While an enlarged prostate can cause weak urine flow, the men's urine truly flowed faster into a computerized meter.
However, while the finasteride-treated prostates shrank more than 21 percent, the placebo prostates grew an average of 8.4 percent.
``That's remarkable. It did not really change the direction of the disease, it just changed one of those indicators,'' said William Jarvis, who has tracked placebos for 25 years.
Nickel said men with normal or small prostate glands did much better on placebos than those with larger glands. Since finasteride shrinks the prostate, it works best in men with large prostates to begin with, he said.
He said he now is willing to prescribe herbal extracts for patients who insist on treatment but whose symptoms don't seem serious enough to him to require expensive drugs.
``Now I know I can keep my patients on something that will help them until such time as they really do deserve a proper medication,'' he said. ``I never before believed in prescribing things I didn't believe worked.''
Jarvis disagreed:
``I think the public already has more faith in [herbal extracts] than they should have. It's an industry that is essentially not meeting the standards of consumer protection that people have come to expect from medicine."
LENGTH: Medium: 52 linesby CNB