# Placebo possible instead of xifaxan?



## suffering (Sep 16, 2005)

My doctor said his office is a part of Pimentel's xifaxan study. So if I were to do it, could I end up getting a placebo instead of xifaxan?


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## Kathleen M. (Nov 16, 1999)

Depending on how the study is set up that could be a possibility.Just the process of being in a clinical trial can change the course of a disease, any disease. There are always some people who get better for no reason at all, or because of how you tend to be treated in a clinical trial. I've been on both sides of clinical trials (patient and coordinator) once you are in they want to keep you so they tend to be nice, they listen to everything you have to say about your symptoms, and all that bedside manner stuff that is pretty healing all by itself.If you did an all placebo trial some 5-30% of the people may get better depending on the condition, sometimes it is even higher than that but that is the range you expect. So you need to know what that percentage is to make sure the treatment is actually doing something in addition to what would have happened anyway.For some diseases you can't be untreated (like a cancer trial where untreated is a death sentence). In those cases you get either the new treatment, or the standard treatment, and they want to see the new treatment work as well or better than the standard treatment.Sometimes small initial studies are done without a placebo control, but then you can't tell if the treatment really worked. Usually these are done to see if there is enough reason to spend the time and the money on a larger trial with a placebo. Pimental's work is far enough along that I'd expect that you'd need to do some placebo controlled experiments. K.


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## SpAsMaN* (May 11, 2002)

Antibiotics are evil.Someone has to stand up.Most likely that will make IBS worst.Possibly worsening your symptoms forever.I took them to get rid of "SIBO" and now i'm worst.My sigmoid acting up many time a time refusing to move gas the way it should.


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