Pharmacological trials in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) should include a run-in period of at least 2 weeks and dosing of no more than once or twice a day in order to minimize the pooled placebo response rate, a new meta-analysis suggested.
More than a quarter of IBS patients had a placebo response on the measure of global improvement, with multiple moderators associated with the response. Identifying these moderators could improve the design of IBS drug trials, said Michelle Bosman, MD, of Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands, and colleagues.