It's not nice to fool people but in the case of placebos it can cure them of their ailments.

Harvard Medical School researchers show placebos do have a positive effect on patients. The team used sugar pills and sham acupuncture to cure pain caused by repetitive strain injury.

The two placebo treatments worked with sham acupuncture (the needle does not really penetrate the skin but unknown to patients slides back into the needle holder) being slightly more effective.

Curiously, both placebos came with side effects: 15% of people who took the sugar pills reported drowsiness while 20% felt pain from sham acupuncture.

Meanwhile, researchers from the University of Turin said some drugs can boost the power of placebo. When combined with proglumide, patients reported greater relief from postoperative pain than those who received placebo alone. Proglumide is not a painkiller. The researchers discovered proglumide helps reduce pain by boosting the brain's "expectation pathways." However, it only works with placebo painkillers.

The researchers say their findings show that when patients believe in a cure or trust their doctors, it can result in genuine physiological changes in people suffering from pain, depression, and even Parkinson's disease.

A placebo is an inert substance usually sugar made to appear indistinguishable from an authentic drug. The most common use of a placebo is in the testing of new drugs to provide an evaluation by comparison. Also, a placebo may be prescribed when there is no apparent organic basis for an illness.

The "placebo effect" is attributed to psychological factors. In conditions involving the central nervous system, such as pain or anxiety, placebo effects often mimic the effects of an active drug.