More than two-thirds of the common side-effects people experience after a Covid jab can be attributed to a negative version of the placebo effect rather than the vaccine itself, researchers claim.
The findings suggest that a substantial proportion of milder side-effects, such as headaches, short-term fatigue, and arm pain are not produced by the constituents of the vaccine, but by other factors thought to generate the nocebo response, including anxiety, expectation and misattributing various ailments to having had the jab.
“Telling patients that the intervention they are taking has side-effects that are similar to placebo treatments for the condition in randomised controlled trials actually reduces anxiety and makes patients take a moment to consider the side-effect,” said Ted Kaptchuk, professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard medical school, and a senior author on the study. “But we need more research.
When the researchers looked at side-effects after the second jab, they found the rate of headaches or other systemic symptoms was nearly twice as high in the vaccine group compared with the placebo group, at 61% and 32% respectively. The difference was even greater for local ailments, reaching 73% among those who had the vaccine and 12% in the placebo group.
Singapore Latest News, Singapore Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.