Working with patients' treatment expectations – what we can learn from homeopathy

This narrative review examines how homeopathy, despite its questionable scientific basis, effectively utilizes factors like prior information, communication, and treatment context to optimize patients' treatment expectations and, consequently, perceived treatment benefits. The authors analyze how these factors contribute to the placebo effect in homeopathy and discuss what evidence-based medicine can learn from these practices to improve treatment effectiveness, tolerability, satisfaction, and compliance. While acknowledging homeopathy's lack of efficacy beyond the placebo effect, the review advocates for the reintegration of its effective placebo mechanisms into evidence-based medicine.

Marcel Wilhelm, Christiane Hermann, Winfried Rief, Manfred Schedlowski, Ulrike Bingel, Alexander Winkler