Mark Pitts’s research while affiliated with University of Chicago and other places

No abstract is available for this article.

To the Editor As clinicians who have consulted and treated many patients with prominent ears, we read with great interest the article by Litschel et al¹ because this is one of the few studies that have managed to quantify the attention-drawing potential of protruding ears and to measure the effect of protruding ears on the perception of personality traits. However, we believe that the authors should have provided a greater explanation of the administration and use of the visual analog scales (VAS) for the rating of personalities in the study. This is because, to our knowledge, the VAS has not been used in any published studies for the purposes of personality rating. The authors¹ have also not mentioned any reliability and validity tests for the use of VAS for the purposes as mentioned on the study.

A placebo is usually defined as a pharmacologically inert preparation prescribed more for the mental relief of the patient than for its actual effect on a disorder.[1] Placebos have been shown to be effective for patient treatment in surgery,[2] cardiology,[3] psychiatry,[4] primary care.[5] In recent years, it has also been considered for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD)[6] as well. This is because anti-depressants used to optimize outcomes[7] in MDD have numerous adverse side effects and can be financially expensive for use while placebos have been reported to help patients with MDD without the high costs. However, the use of placebos faces ethical challenges which may limit its use. This article hopes to illustrate these challenges using the ethical model which consists of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice[8] to allow clinicians to inform the decision of using placebos for the treatment of MDD in patients.

We read with great interest the article "Use of health services by patients with psoriasis: a population based study" by Kao and colleagues(1) . This is because the study shows us objectively that patients with psoriasis have statistically significant higher economic burdens. This could help inform healthcare policy management for an optimized approach to the disease. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.