An oxytocin receptor antagonist (atosiban) in the treatment of preterm labor: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial with tocolytic rescue

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Oxytocin in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Who Took Part

PubMed tags the participants as women only.

Five hundred thirty-one patients were randomized to receive, and 501 received, either intravenous atosiban (n = 246) or placebo (n = 255), followed by subcutaneous maintenance with the assigned agent.

Secondary end points were the proportion of patients who remained undelivered and did not receive an alternate tocolytic at 24 hours, 48 hours, and 7 days.

How the Study Was Run

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

Because people in this Oxytocin study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received Oxytocin.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Oxytocin could be set against what happens without it.

Running at several centres spread the Oxytocin study over different clinics and patient groups.

A multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial with tocolytic rescue was designed.

Standard tocolytics as rescue tocolysis were permitted after 1 hour of either placebo or atosiban if preterm labor continued.

The primary end point was the time from the start of study drug to delivery or therapeutic failure.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Fetal Death, Fetal Distress, Gestational Age, Obstetric Labor, Premature, Tocolysis, Tocolytic Agents and Vasotocin.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 11 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2000 (American journal of obstetrics and gynecology), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Oxytocin compound page.