Development and validation of the General attitude towards Medication Questionnaire (GAMQ).

Background: Attitudes towards medication can affect treatment outcomes and adherence through mechanisms such as placebo and nocebo effects. Questionnaires assessing both negative and positive attitudes towards medication in general, which can be used across a variety of settings and in both patient and non-patient samples, are however lacking. To fill this gap, we developed and validated the General Attitude towards Medication Questionnaire (GAMQ).

Conditioning cortisol in healthy young women - A randomized controlled trial.

Background: Learned placebo effects induced by pharmacological conditioning affect immune and endocrine outcomes and may offer new possibilities for clinical applications. Whether or not cortisol is subject to this type of associative learning processes, and whether conditioning may affect responses to stress, is currently unclear.

Method: A randomized placebo-controlled trial was conducted in 48 healthy young women.

Conditioning cortisol in humans: design and pilot study of a randomized controlled trial.

Background: Conditioning of physiological responses can be achieved by repeatedly pairing a previously neutral conditioned stimulus with the administration of a pharmacologically salient unconditioned stimulus. This type of conditioning has been effective for specific immune and endocrine responses, but results with regard to conditioning of cortisol, a key stress-regulatory parameter, are currently unclear. This paper describes a pharmacological conditioning design, optimized for the examination of effects of cortisol conditioning under both basal conditions and in response to stress.

[Placebo and nocebo effects on itch : Methodological and clinical implications].

Patients often experience positive (placebo) or negative (nocebo) treatment effects due to the positive or negative expectations they have about the treatment. Placebo and nocebo effects have only relatively recently received attention for itch. Experimental studies indicate that, in line with research in other areas, such as pain, learning via verbal suggestion and conditioning plays a key role in placebo and nocebo effects on itch.

Human Pharmacological Conditioning of the Immune and Endocrine System: Challenges and Opportunities.

In this chapter, we review recent studies on conditioned pharmacological effects on immune and endocrine responses in humans, and discuss challenges and opportunities for bringing these effects into clinical practice. By altering physiological mechanisms in part independent of pharmacological agents, pharmacological conditioning has high clinical relevance, as illustrated in some patient studies. Methodological challenges for further investigation include broadening the spectrum of opportunities for conditioned pharmacological effects, by investigating conditioning of substances that have not or not often been used before (e.