Placebo Effect About Fatigue in Obesity

Istituto Auxologico Italiano80 enrolled

Overview

Fatigue is a central symptom of obesity: it significantly impacts daily functioning, psychological well-being, compliance with physical therapy, and quality of life. However, the full understanding of the origin and treatment of fatigue in obesity is still a matter of debate, requiring further research, especially from new perspectives. From a neuroscientific perspective, fatigue is more than the subjective perception of tiredness resulting from mental or physical exertion or illness. It results in the complex interaction between (bottom-up) sensory input coming from the periphery, and motivational and psychological input, which is related to top-down cognition. In this framework, placebos may affect the output of the top-down cognitive processing by altering the individual evaluation of the ongoing peripheral performance. Indeed, evidence from both healthy conditions and clinical contexts suggests that fatigue can be modulated. The after-effect of such a modulation can be observed not only at a behavioural level, in terms of physical endurance, but also a psychological (i.e., decreased of perceived fatigue) and neurophysiological (changes in brain activity, especially in the fatigue-related components as the RP) levels.

Study Type

OBSERVATIONAL

Enrollment

Conditions

Obesity

Interventions

Placebo-Natural History

Half of the participants will receive a placebo (i.e., motivational/verbal) cue before and after an experimental session in which they will perform several lifts. Half of the participants will receive no placebo before and after an experimental session in which they will perform several lifts.

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 20 YearsMax age: 50 YearsHealthy volunteers:

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion criteria: • Right-handed diagnosis of obesity (the level of body mass index - BMI - higher or equal to 30). Exclusion criteria: • concurrent neurological, neurodevelopmental (e.g., autism), motor, somatosensory and/or psychiatric disorders

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Behavioural outcome of fatigue

The number of flexions (from a minimum of 0 to maximum of180) performed before and after the treatment for each individual.

Time frame: baseline

Secondary Outcomes

The individual level of perceived fatigue

On a Likert scale (from 0 to 7), participants verbally report the individual level of perceived fatigue in doing the flexions before and after the treatment.