A single-dose comparison of the acute effects between the new somatostatin analog SOM230 and octreotide in acromegalic patients

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Octreotide and Somatostatin, published as a randomized controlled trial.

GH-secreting pituitary adenomas, which are not controlled, also express sst(5).

The researchers compared the acute effects of octreotide and SOM230, a new somatostatin analog with high affinity for sst(1,2,3,5) on hormone release in acromegalic patients.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 12 patients taking part.

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

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and crossover study.

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

Neither the patients nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Octreotide, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

In the crossover set-up each of the patients took both Octreotide and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Acromegaly, Human Growth Hormone, Octreotide, Somatostatin and Tumor Cells, Cultured.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and crossover study of Octreotide and Somatostatin in 12 patients.

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.

The publication is from 2004 (The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Octreotide compound page and the Somatostatin compound page, all human trials.