Does docusate work better than placebo for constipation in controlled trials?

The retrieved evidence does not include a single placebo-controlled trial of docusate for constipation.

The only study that mentions docusate is a 2017 quality-improvement project in Alberta Health Services [1]. It showed that after staff were told docusate lacks efficacy, its use dropped by about 55% over 18 months without increasing other laxatives [1]. That is not a controlled trial—it is a pre-post audit. It tells you what clinicians believed, not whether docusate works.

Every other record in this retrieval tests a different intervention: probiotics, lubiprostone, lactulose, prune juice, vibrating capsules, and others [2, 3]. None of them compare docusate to placebo. The question asks about controlled trials of docusate specifically, and this search found none.

Outside this retrieval, the broader literature is well-documented: multiple small randomized trials and systematic reviews have found docusate no better than placebo for stool frequency or consistency. But I cannot cite those numbers here because they are not in the evidence block. What the retrieval does show is that the one study mentioning docusate treated it as an ineffective drug worth deprescribing [1].

My call: the evidence retrieved does not support that docusate works better than placebo for constipation in controlled trials. The absence of such trials in this search is itself a finding. Confidence: low, because the retrieval is thin and the question deserves a direct trial comparison that was not found.