The changes of IGF binding proteins after rhGH administration to patients totally dependent on parenteral nutrition.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Human Growth Hormone in this randomized controlled trial publication.

The objective was to study the effect of recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) administration to patients with chronic malnutrition maintained on total parenteral nutrition (TPN) on the levels of insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) and IGF binding proteins (IGFBPs) during a double-blind trial.

Samples were collected on the first day (start of the TPN) to measure basal values, the seventh day to study the effect of TPN and the 10th, 14th and 21st days to evaluate the rhGH effect.

Why It Was Studied

Radioimmunoassays were used to analyse IGF-I, free IGF-I (fIGF-I) and IGFBP1-3.

Electrophoresis with Western ligand blotting and Western immunoblotting was applied to find the pattern of IGFBPs.

Who Took Part

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

How the Study Was Run

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

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

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

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

Basal laboratory evaluation, nutritional status and glucose tolerance were assessed using standard laboratory techniques.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Human Growth Hormone, Insulin-Like Growth Factor Binding Protein 1, Insulin-Like Growth Factor Binding Protein 2, Insulin-Like Growth Factor Binding Protein 3, Insulin-Like Growth Factor Binding Proteins, Nitrogen and Nutrition Disorders.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Human Growth Hormone.

The publication is from 2001 (Growth hormone & IGF research : official journal of the Growth Hormone Research Society and the International IGF Research Society), a journal based in Scotland.

More context: the related Exogenous HGH, sermorelin & older GHRPs (why they're passed over) library page, all human trials.