Oral desmopressin for nocturnal polyuria in elderly subjects: a double-blind, placebo-controlled randomized exploratory study

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Vasopressin and Desmopressin.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

Twelve men and five women (mean age 67.7 years, sd 4.6 years) met these criteria and were treated with oral desmopressin or placebo at bedtime for 2 weeks on each medication in a randomized, double-blind, crossover design.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Vasopressin and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Vasopressin, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Vasopressin group a baseline to be compared against.

In the crossover set-up each of the participants took both Vasopressin and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

The timeline in the abstract includes 2 weeks.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Deamino Arginine Vasopressin, Polyuria, Renal Agents and Urination Disorders.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Vasopressin and Desmopressin over 2 weeks.

Its findings take up roughly 10 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 1999 (BJU international), a journal based in England.

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