A Crucial Blind Spot in Veterinary Medicine

In 2003, a team of researchers from several American universities launched a small clinical trial, the results of which should not have been a surprise. Of the patients taking the active drug, an anticonvulsant intended to reduce epileptic seizures, 86 percent saw their seizure frequency fall. So did 79 percent of the patients that received a sham treatment, or a placebo.

It seemed like a classic example of the placebo effect, with one notable difference: The patients were dogs.

“As I did these placebo-controlled studies and I was evaluating data, I was like, ‘Oh, look, these dogs are getting better on the placebo,’” says Karen Munana, a veterinary neurologist at North Carolina State University who co-authored the study. That response had never been reported for epilepsy treatments in dogs before, she says.

At the time, double-blind placebo-controlled trials—the gold standard for evaluating new medical treatments—were relatively uncommon in veterinary medicine. But if Munana and her colleagues hadn’t done one, they