Improved 1000-m running performance and pacing strategy with caffeine and placebo effect: a balanced placebo design study

Purpose: To investigate the placebo effect of caffeine on pacing strategy and performance over 1000-m running time-trials using a balanced placebo design. Methods: Eleven well-trained male middle-distance athletes performed seven 1000-m time-trials (one familiarisation, two baseline and four experimental). Experimental trials consisted of the administration of four treatments: informed caffeine/received caffeine (CC), informed caffeine/received placebo (CP), informed placebo/received caffeine (PC), and informed placebo/received placebo (PP). Treatments were randomized. Split times were recorded at 200-, 400-, 600-, 800- and 1000-m and peak heart rate (HRpeak) and rating of perceived exertion (RPE) were recorded at the completion of the trial. Results: Relative to baseline, participants ran faster during CC (d = 0.42) and CP (d = 0.43). These changes were associated with an increased pace during the first half of the trial. No differences were shown in pacing or performance between baseline and the PC (d = 0.21) and open administration of placebo (d = 0.10). No differences were reported between treatments for HRpeak (η2 = 0.084) and RPE (η2 = 0.009). Conclusions: Our results indicate that the effect of believing to have ingested caffeine improved performance to the same magnitude as actually receiving caffeine. These improvements were associated with an increase in pace during the first half of the time-trial

The placebo and nocebo effect on sports performance: A systematic review

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Taylor and Francis in European Journal of Sport Science on 20/08/2019, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17461391.2019.1655098 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.The aim of this review was to determine the magnitude of the placebo and nocebo effect on sport performance. Articles published before March 2019 were located using Medline, Web of Science, PubMed, EBSCO, Science Direct, and Scopus. Studies that examined placebo and nocebo effects of an objective dependent variable on sports performance, which included a control or baseline condition, were included in the analysis. Studies were classified into two categories of ergogenic aids: 1) nutritional and 2) mechanical. Cohen’s d effect sizes were calculated from 32 studies involving 1,513 participants. Small to moderate placebo effects were found for both placebo (d = 0.36) and nocebo (d = 0.37) effects and when separated by nutritional (d = 0.35) and mechanical (d = 0.47) ergogenic aids. The pooled effect size revealed a small to moderate effect size across all studies (d = 0.38). Results suggest that placebo and nocebo effects can exert a small to moderate effect on sports performance

Consensus statement on placebo effects in sports and exercise: the need for conceptual clarity, methodological rigour, and the elucidation of neurobiological mechanisms.

In June 2017 a group of experts in anthropology, biology, kinesiology, neuroscience, physiology, and psychology convened in Canterbury, UK, to address questions relating to the placebo effect in sport and exercise. The event was supported exclusively by Quality Related (QR) funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). The funder did not influence the content or conclusions of the group. No competing interests were declared by any delegate. During the meeting and in follow-up correspondence, all delegates agreed the need to communicate the outcomes of the meeting via a brief consensus statement. The two specific aims of this statement are to encourage researchers in sport and exercise science to: 1. Where possible, adopt research methods that more effectively elucidate the role of the brain in mediating the effects of treatments and interventions. 2. Where possible, adopt methods that factor for and/or quantify placebo effects that could explain a percentage of inter-individual variability in response to treatments and interventio

Consensus statement on placebo effects in sports and exercise: The need for conceptual clarity, methodological rigour, and the elucidation of neurobiological mechanisms

In June 2017 a group of experts in anthropology, biology, kinesiology, neuroscience, physiology, and psychology convened in Canterbury, UK, to address questions relating to the placebo effect in sport and exercise. The event was supported exclusively by Quality Related (QR) funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). The funder did not influence the content or conclusions of the group. No competing interests were declared by any delegate. During the meeting and in follow-up correspondence, all delegates agreed the need to communicate the outcomes of the meeting via a brief consensus statement. The two specific aims of this statement are to encourage researchers in sport and exercise science to 1. Where possible, adopt research methods that more effectively elucidate the role of the brain in mediating the effects of treatments and interventions. 2. Where possible, adopt methods that factor for and/or quantify placebo effects that could explain a percentage of inter-individual variability in response to treatments and intervention

Making effective use of healthcare data using data-to-text technology

Healthcare organizations are in a continuous effort to improve health outcomes, reduce costs and enhance patient experience of care. Data is essential to measure and help achieving these improvements in healthcare delivery. Consequently, a data influx from various clinical, financial and operational sources is now overtaking healthcare organizations and their patients. The effective use of this data, however, is a major challenge. Clearly, text is an important medium to make data accessible. Financial reports are produced to assess healthcare organizations on some key performance indicators to steer their healthcare delivery. Similarly, at a clinical level, data on patient status is conveyed by means of textual descriptions to facilitate patient review, shift handover and care transitions. Likewise, patients are informed about data on their health status and treatments via text, in the form of reports or via ehealth platforms by their doctors. Unfortunately, such text is the outcome of a highly labour-intensive process if it is done by healthcare professionals. It is also prone to incompleteness, subjectivity and hard to scale up to different domains, wider audiences and varying communication purposes. Data-to-text is a recent breakthrough technology in artificial intelligence which automatically generates natural language in the form of text or speech from data. This chapter provides a survey of data-to-text technology, with a focus on how it can be deployed in a healthcare setting. It will (1) give an up-to-date synthesis of data-to-text approaches, (2) give a categorized overview of use cases in healthcare, (3) seek to make a strong case for evaluating and implementing data-to-text in a healthcare setting, and (4) highlight recent research challenges.Comment: 27 pages, 2 figures, book chapte

Are dietary supplement users more likely to dope than non-users?: A systematic review and meta-analysis

In the past decade, a body of evidence has reported that dietary supplement use is related to prohibited performance enhancing substance use (i.e., doping). To help international and national sport organisations understand the degree to which dietary supplement use is related to doping, the objectives of this systematic review and meta-analysis were to 1) compare the prevalence of doping between dietary supplement users and non-users and 2) identify whether supplement use is related to doping social cognitive factors. We searched for studies sampling athletes and that measured both dietary supplement use and doping in EMBASE, MEDLINE, PsychINFO, CINAHL and SPORTDiscus from database creation to May 2022. Risk of bias was assessed using JBI Critical Appraisal Checklist for cross-sectional studies and the STROBE checklist. Twenty-six cross-sectional studies, involving 13,296 athletes were included. Random-effect models revealed that doping was 2.74 (95% CI=2.10 to 3.57) times more prevalent in dietary supplement users than non-users, and that users reported stronger doping intentions (r=0.26, 0.18 to 0.34) and attitudes (r=0.21, 0.13 to 0.28) compared to non-users. Preliminary evidence also suggests that dietary supplement users were less likely to dope if they were more task oriented and had a stronger sense of morality. Results of the review are limited by the cross-sectional design used in all studies and lack of consistency in measurement of dietary supplement use and doping. Data indicate that athletes using dietary supplements are more likely to self-report doping and, therefore, anti-doping policy should target dietary supplement use in anti-doping education programmes by providing alternative strategies for performance enhancement or highlighting the safest ways they can be consumed. Similarly, as a large proportion of athletes use dietary supplements without doping, further research is needed to understand the factors that protect a dietary supplement user from doping. No funding was received for the review. A study protocol can be found here: https://osf.io/xvcaq

Effects of small airway dysfunction on the clinical expression of asthma:a focus on asthma symptoms and bronchial hyper-responsiveness

BackgroundThe small airways are an important site of inflammation in asthma. However, the relation between small airway dysfunction and clinical expression of asthma has hardly been studied. AimTo investigate the association of small and large airway dysfunction with asthma symptoms and bronchial hyper-responsiveness (BHR). MethodsFifty-eight patients with asthma were characterized with spirometry, body plethysmography, impulse oscillometry, alveolar and bronchial exhaled nitric oxide, and a methacholine provocation. Symptoms of nocturnal asthma, exercise-related symptoms, BHR symptoms, and respiratory symptoms were assessed with the Asthma Control Questionnaire and Bronchial Hyper-responsiveness Questionnaire. Perception of dyspnea was rated with the Borg score during the provocation test. ResultsSmall and large airway dysfunction did not associate with higher scores for nocturnal, exercise-related, or BHR symptoms. Only higher scores on wheezing were significantly associated with higher values of difference between R5 and R20 (R5-R20) (r=0.367, P ConclusionSmall and large airway dysfunction poorly associate with asthma symptoms in our patients. However, deteriorations in small airway dysfunction are strongly related to an increase in dyspnea during bronchial provocation with methacholine. Small airway dysfunction contributes also independently to the clinical expression of asthma, as reflected by the severity of BHR

Consensus statement on placebo effects in sports and exercise: The need for conceptual clarity, methodological rigour, and the elucidation of neurobiological mechanisms

In June 2017 a group of experts in anthropology, biology, kinesiology, neuroscience, physiology, and psychology convened in Canterbury, UK, to address questions relating to the placebo effect in sport and exercise. The event was supported exclusively by Quality Related (QR) funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). The funder did not influence the content or conclusions of the group. No competing interests were declared by any delegate. During the meeting and in follow-up correspondence, all delegates agreed the need to communicate the outcomes of the meeting via a brief consensus statement. The two specific aims of this statement are to encourage researchers in sport and exercise science to 1. Where possible, adopt research methods that more effectively elucidate the role of the brain in mediating the effects of treatments and interventions. 2. Where possible, adopt methods that factor for and/or quantify placebo effects that could explain a percentage of inter-individual variability in response to treatments and intervention.</p