Low serum insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1): a significant association with prostate cancer

What Was Tested

Researchers studied IGF-1 LR3 in this controlled clinical trial publication.

Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) is an important mitogenic and antiapoptotic peptide that affects the proliferation of normal and malignant cells.

Contradictory reports on the association between serum IGF-1 level and prostate cancer have been highlighted in the recent literature.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between serum levels of IGF-1 and prostate cancer.

Who Took Part

The study group was 57 patients.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were middle-aged adults and older adults, men only.

The researchers analyzed a population of 57 patients who underwent radical prostatectomy (RP) for adenocarcinoma.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a parallel-group study.

Groups ran in parallel: each of the patients stayed in one arm throughout.

A time span of 6 months appears in the methods.

Serum samples were collected before RP (T0), 6 months after RP (T6), and from 39 age-matched controls.

Parallel samples were evaluated for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels.

Data between groups were analyzed using Welch's t-test and levels before RP and after 6 months were compared by paired t-test.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Adenocarcinoma, Biomarkers, Tumor, Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay, Insulin-Like Growth Factor I, Postoperative Period, Preoperative Care and Prostate-Specific Antigen.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a parallel-group study of IGF-1 LR3 in 57 patients over 6 months.

Results are reported in around 5 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2000 (Techniques in urology), a journal based in United States.

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