Effect of performance enhancing drugs may be via placebo

NewsBot · Jun 19, 2008

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Medical News Today are reporting:
Athletic Performance Enhancement From Drugs Could Be Mind Over Matter

A new study from Australia suggests that when given a placebo that they believe to be a performance-enhancing drug, some athletes, especially if they are male, not only believe their performance improves, but actually show real measured improvements in performance, lending support to the idea that "mind over matter", or the power of the mind, plays an important role in the development of athletic prowess.

The study, which was funded by the World Anti-Doping Agency and the Australian Government Anti-Doping Research Program, is the work of Jennifer Hansen, RN, lead author and nurse researcher at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia, and was presented at the The Endocrine Society's 90th Annual Meeting in San Francisco, which took place from 15th to 18th June this year.

Plans to publish the study in a journal were not mentioned in the press statement.

Hansen said that the "placebo" effect they found in their study on how the power of the mind affects physical performance was greater in male recreational athletes than in females.

"Athletes are doping with growth hormone to improve sporting performance despite any evidence it actually improves performance," said Hansen, explaining that she and her colleagues wanted to find out if any improvement in performance was because of the drug itself or because the athlete believed the drug was working.

Hansen and colleagues recruited 64 volunteers, all young adult recreational athletes, and randomly assigned them to two groups. One group took a growth hormone (a drug that is banned from use in sports), and the other group took an inactive placebo. Both groups took the drugs for 8 weeks.

The study was double blinded, that is neither the athletes nor the drug administrators knew whether they were being given an active drug or a placebo.....
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NewsBot · Nov 22, 2014

The Effects of an Injected Placebo on Endurance Running Performance.
Ross, Ramzy; Gray, Cindy M.; Gill, Jason M. R.
Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise: November 19, 2014

PURPOSE: To quantify the placebo effect magnitude on endurance running performance, in 'real-world' field-based head-to-head competition settings, of an injected placebo ('OxyRBX') purporting to have similar effects to recombinant human erythropoietin (r-HuEPO).

METHODS: 15 endurance-trained club-level men (age: 27.5+/-6.8 years, BMI: 22.9+/-2.0 kg[middle dot]m-2), with personal best 10 km times of 39.3+/-4.4 min (mean+/-SD), completed the randomised cross-over study design of 3 km races before and after 7-day 'control' and 'placebo' phases. During the placebo phase participants self-administered subcutaneous saline injections daily, believing it to be OxyRBX, with no intervention during the control phase. At the start and end of each 7-day phase 3 km running performance was assessed. Qualitative assessments of participants' perceptions and experiences were recorded throughout and in semi-structured interviews on completion.

RESULTS: Race time improved significantly more in response to the placebo intervention (9.73+/-1.96 s faster, P=0.0005), than in response to control (1.82+/-1.94 s faster, P=0.41) (P interaction = 0.02). In response to the placebo, participants reported reductions in physical effort, increased potential motivation and improved recovery. Beliefs and congruence between positive expectations of the effects of the placebo and perceptions of physical change during training also appeared to impact on competitive performance.

CONCLUSIONS: Compared to control, the injected placebo improved 3 km race time by 1.2%. This change is of clear sporting relevance, but is smaller than the performance improvement elicited by r-HuEPO administration. The qualitative data suggest that placebo may have improved performance by both reducing perception of effort and increasing potential motivation, in accord with the psychobiological model for exercise performance, and that cognitive and non-cognitive processes appear to have influenced placebo response.
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