[Treatment of isolated nocturnal enuresis: alarm or desmopressin?]

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Vasopressin and Desmopressin, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Monosymptomatic nocturnal enuresis is common in healthy school children.

Treatment is often required because of social and psychological convenience.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are children and teenagers, both men and women.

Patients (n = 135) aged 6 to 16 years were enrolled between January 1992 and December 1994.

Inclusion criteria were: primary monosymptomatic nocturnal enuresis in healthy children, age > or = 6 years, absence of previous treatment using either desmopressin or alarm.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Vasopressin group and the comparison group should start out alike.

The timeline in the abstract includes 15 days.

The alarm was a pad-bell device (Wet-stop, Sega) and the sound source was attached to the upper part of the pajamas.

Patients were evaluated after 15 days on therapy by phone call and thereafter by attending the outpatient clinic at 2-3 and 4-6 months.

At the time of the second evaluation, a switch from alarm to desmopressin (or vice-versa) was proposed to those who did not respond to the initial treatment.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Deamino Arginine Vasopressin, Enuresis, France, Monitoring, Physiologic, Patient Acceptance of Health Care, Patient Selection and Reimbursement Mechanisms.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Vasopressin and Desmopressin over 15 days.

Results are reported in around 8 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 1999 (Archives de pediatrie : organe officiel de la Societe francaise de pediatrie), a journal based in France.

More context: the Vasopressin compound page and the Desmopressin compound page, all human trials.