Definition: Any dummy medication or treatment. Although placebos originally were medicinal preparations having no specific pharmacological activity against a targeted condition, the concept has been extended to include treatments or procedures, especially those administered to control groups in clinical trials in order to provide baseline measurements for the experimental protocol.
usually NIM; do not index routinely for articles on CLINICAL TRIALS AS TOPIC; DOUBLE-BLIND METHOD; etc., unless particularly discussed; Manual 18.12.13
