How to Use placebo in a Sentence

placebo

noun
  • About 7,000 of the patients took Nexletol, and the rest took a placebo.
    — Nick Blackmer, Verywell Health, 22 Mar. 2023
  • Two thirds of the participants got the peanut patch, while the rest got a placebo patch.
    — Will Sullivan, Smithsonian Magazine, 15 May 2023
  • Twelve people from the placebo group died in the same timeframe.
    — Colleen Stinchcombe, SELF, 14 Dec. 2021
  • There was one death in the treatment group, compared with nine deaths in the placebo group.
    — Travis Caldwell and Jen Christensen, CNN, 17 Dec. 2021
  • Sixty-three of the cases were in people in the placebo group and 14 in the vaccine group.
    — Jacqueline Howard, CNN, 14 June 2021
  • Among the placebo group, the average weight loss was 0.6%.
    — Bronwyn Thompson september 09, New Atlas, 9 Sep. 2024
  • And there were no deaths in the group that got the drug and ate, unfortunately in the group that got the placebo.
    — USA TODAY, 13 Oct. 2021
  • At the end of the trial, the women who took probiotics lost more weight than those in the placebo arm.
    — Sarah Bradley, Women's Health, 30 Jan. 2023
  • Two-thirds would receive the vaccine, and the rest would receive a placebo.
    — The Washington Post, Arkansas Online, 27 July 2021
  • The drug slowed the rate of cognitive decline by 35% compared to a placebo.
    — Annalisa Merelli, Quartz, 3 May 2023
  • Not being able to test against a placebo makes the study of these drugs much more difficult.
    — Tim Newcomb, Popular Mechanics, 6 June 2023
  • Those on the placebo only lost an average of 3.1% of their body weight.
    — Amber Smith, Discover Magazine, 25 Sep. 2023
  • In other words, the risk of getting sick was reduced by 95% in the group that got the vaccine, compared with the group that got the placebo.
    — Arkansas Online, 29 July 2021
  • Of these, 14 were among those who had received the vaccine, and 63 among those who had gotten a placebo.
    — Peter Loftus, WSJ, 14 June 2021
  • In the placebo group, six of the 72 patients got worse, and four were hospitalized.
    — Allysia Finley, WSJ, 28 Dec. 2021
  • Half the patients received hookworms for the treatment and half got a placebo.
    — Nick Blackmer, Verywell Health, 31 July 2023
  • The study found that the median time to sustained recovery was 11 days in the ivermectin group and 11 days in the placebo group.
    — Aidin Vaziri, San Francisco Chronicle, 24 Feb. 2023
  • In that study, the placebo group had a recurrence of symptoms in 1.5% of cases.
    — Katia Hetter, CNN, 8 Aug. 2022
  • People shown the ad were 14 points more likely to vote for a Democrat than those shown a placebo ad.
    — Time, 26 Oct. 2022
  • There were nine deaths in the placebo group in the final analysis, and one in the molnupiravir group.
    — Matthew Herper, STAT, 25 Dec. 2021
  • The 61-year-old from Wilton, Connecticut, got the placebo, but still quit drinking.
    — Carla K. Johnson, Anchorage Daily News, 25 Aug. 2022
  • Half of this group was assigned to take Paxlovid twice daily for five days; the other half got a placebo.
    — Brenda Goodman, CNN, 15 June 2022
  • There were three cases of Covid in the vaccine group, compared with 16 cases in the placebo group.
    — NBC News, 26 Oct. 2021
  • Ten were moderate and four were severe, all in the placebo group.
    — Morgan Winsor, ABC News, 14 June 2021
  • Those who received the placebo were then offered the vaccine.
    — Sarah Toy, WSJ, 22 Sep. 2021
  • At the end of the study, 19 patients who received the placebo had died compared with only 1 death in the group that received AZT.
    — Jerome Groopman, The New Yorker, 17 June 2024
  • And in the trial, 17.3% of volunteers who got the drug had signs of brain bleeding, compared with 9% of those who took a placebo.
    — Joseph Walker, WSJ, 30 Nov. 2022
  • CureVac declined to say how many who got the shot got sick or how many received a placebo.
    — Naomi Kresge, Fortune, 17 June 2021
  • Here’s the thing, though: Those studies can only show how big groups of people on the medications fared versus people on a placebo.
    — Amy Norton, SELF, 25 Feb. 2025
  • The study reported that a small weekly dose of the drug, compared to a placebo, cut down on craving, quantity, and frequency of alcohol use.
    — Paul Smaglik, Discover Magazine, 13 Feb. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'placebo.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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