Neurotensin pulmonary metabolism in normal and asthmatic subjects

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Neurotensin in this controlled clinical trial publication.

Evaluation of the pulmonary metabolism of the endogenous NT in asthmatic subjects during symptom-free periods and after a methacoline challenge test and in healthy individuals.

Why It Was Studied

The role of pulmonary metabolism of endogenous neurotensin (NT) in asthma is still unclear.

Information on this subject in humans is scarce.

Who Took Part

The study group was 10 individuals.

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

Ten asthmatic subjects (aged 34 to 70 years), diagnosed with extrinsic (n = 5), atopic (n = 3), and mixed asthma (n = 2), were compared to a group of 10 healthy individuals (aged 45 to 69 years).

The asthmatic group of patients was evaluated with a PD20-FEV1 methacoline challenge test 3 days after a washout period from cessation of their regular medications.

How the Study Was Run

Two catheters were inserted in order to draw blood samples for the evaluation of NT concentration: one was inserted into the pulmonary artery and the other into the radial artery.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Asthma, Lung, Methacholine Chloride and Neurotensin.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a controlled clinical trial of Neurotensin in 10 individuals.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

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 2003 (European review for medical and pharmacological sciences), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Neurotensin compound page, all human trials.