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Nocebo effects are negative effects on treatment efficacy and tolerability induced or driven by psychological factors. Like placebo effects, nocebo effects do not result from bias but are triggered by neurobiological, psychosocial, and contextual factors. In studies, nocebo effects reduced treatment effectiveness and affected adherence.
For example, patients switching from a brand name to a generic of identical medication are prone to report negative effects from the new drug. In a recent study, the 5-HT1 agonist rizatriptan was less effective when falsely labeled placebo. Nocebo effects result from public media coverage, “contagion” in social media, patient-clinician communications, and, I would think, warnings from watchdog agencies like t…