The Management of Erectile Dysfunction With Placebo Only

Placebo-controlled randomized clinical trials (RCT) are the gold standard to provide applicable evidence for clinical practice. A vast number of RCTs for treatment of several disorders has shown a mean placebo effect of 30%. Erectile dysfunction (ED) is a high prevalent disease and its first-line therapy is oral phosphodiesterase type-5 inhibitor (iPDE5) (i.e., sildenafil, vardenafil and tadalafil). Although the placebo effect in iPDE5 RCT occurred at a rate as high as 50%, in the last decade, with the revolutionary discovery of effective pharmacotherapy for ED, oral iPDE5 has become one of the most common prescribed drugs for men. The objective of this study is to evaluate the influence of patients' awareness on the composition of the therapeutic drug in the outcomes of the oral treatment for ED.