POP-Dx: Placebo in Orofacial Pain Diagnosis
Facts
- Contact person:
- Maria Pigg
- Financer:
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- Eklund Foundation
- Responsible at MaU:
- Maria Pigg
- Project members at MaU:
- External project members:
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- Lene Vase – Aarhus universitet
- Donald Nixdorf – University of Minnesota
- Astrid Echorcheville – Skånes universitetssjukhus och Lunds universitet
- Time frame:
- 01 December 2025 - 31 December 2029
- Faculty/department:
- Research environment :
- Research subject:
About the project
The placebo effect is a complex phenomenon mediated in the brain, and affected by genetics, personality traits, cognitive and psychosocial factors, as well as verbal and non-verbal cues, e.g. instructions and conditioning. In treatment contexts, the placebo effect is well known; new interventions are therefore generally compared with a placebo in randomised controlled trials to determine specific treatment effects. In diagnostics, the placebo effect may confound the diagnostic outcome and lead to limited diagnostic accuracy and subsequent suboptimal (or even ineffective) management of the patient’s disorder. Especially true may this be in the field of orofacial pain, because cognitive and emotional factors play an important role in pain perception.
The objectives of this project are to:
- Explore and evaluate the impact of the placebo effect on a diagnostic procedure.
- Develop a diagnostic procedure to differentiate between pain maintained by peripheral pain mechanisms and centrally maintained pain in the orofacial area, in which the placebo effect is eliminated, and
- Test the diagnostic efficacy of the developed protocol in a clinical study. The project is part of the research profile “Advancing Oral Health” supported by the Knowledge Foundation.