Conditioning, the Placebo Effect, and Psoriasis

• Status: Completed
• Trial end date: 2006-07-01
• Target enrollment: 0
• Participant gender: All

Summary

This study uses the psychological principle known as classical conditioning to try to improve the standard treatment of psoriasis. Classical conditioning is a process of behavioral modification in which a person learns to connect a certain response-in this case, improvement of psoriasis-with a new action, or stimulus-in this case, application of an inactive cream. The goal of this study is to show that people with psoriasis who are maintained on corticosteroid cream part of the time and an inactive (placebo) cream at other times show a lower incidence of relapse and a reduced severity of psoriasis that patients treated with that same (reduced) amount of medication administered all the time.

• Phase: N/A
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers?: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Details

• Lead Sponsor: University of Rochester
• Collaborator: National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS)
• Treatments: Triamcinolone; Triamcinolone Acetonide; Triamcinolone diacetate; Triamcinolone hexacetonide

Criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

• Psoriasis patients with mild to moderate lesions who are able to attend weekly clinic visits at either the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in Rochester, NY, or Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA.

• Patients must be in good health (as determined by prescreening examination).

• Patients must not be using systemic treatment (for example, oral medications) or intralesional, UV, or topical therapies except bland emollients for at least 2 weeks before the start date of the study.

• Patients must have chronic, stable plaque psoriasis with a score of greater than or equal to 7 on a routine 9-point Severity Index.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Use of immunosuppressive medication within the past 2 months.

• Pregnant or sexually active women who do not use contraceptives.

• Patients who cannot be monitored regularly.

• History of allergy to corticosteroid or other study ointment components.

• Patients who have more than 10 percent of body surface area covered by psoriatic lesions.