The somatotrophic system in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy: relation of insulin-like growth factor-1 and its alterations during growth hormone therapy to cardiac function

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at IGF-1 LR3.

Treatment with human recombinant growth hormone has yielded conflicting results in patients with congestive heart failure.

In addition, growth hormone resistance has been reported in severe heart failure.

Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the somatotrophic axis and effects of growth hormone on haemodynamics in patients with heart failure due to dilated cardiomyopathy.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

Measurements of plasma noradrenaline, serum insulin-like growth factor-1, and insulin-like growth factor binding protein-3 were performed by standard assays at baseline and at the end of the treatment period.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got IGF-1 LR3 and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on IGF-1 LR3, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the IGF-1 LR3 group a baseline to be compared against.

Cardiac size and function were evaluated by magnetic resonance imaging.

Central haemodynamics were obtained by right heart catheterization.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Cardiomyopathy, Dilated, Hemodynamics, Human Growth Hormone, Insulin-Like Growth Factor I, Stroke Volume and Ventricular Function, Left.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of IGF-1 LR3.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 5 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2000 (Clinical endocrinology), a journal based in England.

More context: the IGF-1 LR3 compound page, all human trials.