Conditions: Asthma Placebo Effects
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: CROSSOVER
Enrollment: 39
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
The investigators hypothesize that different placebos will have different effects on subjective and objective asthma outcomes compared with actual therapy and natural history. .

Subjects with asthma are randomly treated with placebo inhaler, placebo acupuncture, albuterol inhaler, or "no treatment" in random order, on three different occasions each. At each of the 12 visits, spirometry is performed repeatedly over 2 hours. Maximum FEV1 achieved and an 11-point, self-reported scale of improvement are examined.

Detailed description:

Arms:
arm 1: albuterol arm 2: placebo arm 3: placebo

Interventions: intervention 1: albuterol intervention 2: placebo inhaler intervention 3: placebo acupuncture
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: None intervention 2: None intervention 3: None

Protocol document: