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| LETTER TO EDITOR |
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| Year : 2015 | Volume
: 6
| Issue : 1 | Page : 19 |
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Control or Placebo Group in A Clinical Trial
Mohammad Saeid Rezaee-Zavareh
Student's Research Committee, Baqiatallah university of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
| Date of Submission | 29-Oct-2014 |
| Date of Acceptance | 12-Nov-2014 |
| Date of Web Publication | 03-Mar-2015 |
Correspondence Address:
Mohammad Saeid Rezaee-Zavareh
Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran
Iran
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/2008-7802.152495
How to cite this article:
Rezaee-Zavareh MS. Control or Placebo Group in A Clinical Trial
. Int J Prev Med 2015;6:19 |
Dear editor,
I read the important article written by Delui et al. entitled "The Effects of Panax ginseng on Lipid Profile, Pro-oxidant: Antioxidant Status and High-sensitivity C Reactive Protein Levels in Hyperlipidemic Patients in Iran" [1] recently published in your journal. Effect of P. ginseng on lipid profile has been investigated in some studies in both animal and human models. [2],[3]
In this article, the authors skilfully have showed that P. ginseng does not have a meaningful impact on lipid profile, and they have suggested more studies in this field.
In the abstract of this paper, it is said that patients (40) were randomly assigned to placebo (20) and control (20) groups and based on the method part of this article, it is understood that 20 patients have taken placebo and the rest have taken ginseng. However in the clinical trials, placebo group is usually used as a control group for comparing with other groups in the study so that the authors can relate the results of the study to the one factor (medicine). Hence, it can be said the control and placebo groups are same and therefore there is a typesetting or other types of error in the Hassanzadeh et al.'s study.
In the end, I would like to thank authors for running such a precise randomized controlled trial.
| References | |  |
| 1. | Delui MH, Fatehi H, Manavifar M, Amini M, Ghayour-Mobarhan M, Zahedi M, et al. The effects of Panax ginseng on lipid profile, pro-oxidant: Antioxidant status and high-sensitivity c reactive protein levels in hyperlipidemic patients in Iran. Int J Prev Med 2013;4:1045-51.  [ PUBMED]  |
| 2. | Kim SH, Park KS. Effects of Panax ginseng extract on lipid metabolism in humans. Pharmacol Res 2003;48:511-3. |
| 3. | Lee LS, Cho CW, Hong HD, Lee YC, Choi UK, Kim YC. Hypolipidemic and antioxidant properties of phenolic compound-rich extracts from white ginseng ( Panax ginseng) in cholesterol-fed rabbits. Molecules 2013;18:12548-60. |
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