Placebo use and participant blinding in osteopathic clinical studies

Currently, Russia continues to actively integrate osteopathy into the scientific framework, which includes adherence to evidence-based medicine principles. The gold standard for confirming the efficacy of therapeutic interventions is double-blind placebo-controlled randomized trials, originally designed for testing new pharmaceutical drugs. However, there are no precise guidelines on how to conduct such studies in osteopathy. This lecture describes types of placebo interventions and blinding techniques, as well as protocol variations for double-blind placebo-controlled trials employed in osteopathic research, which can be utilized when planning scientific projects.