Ghrelin does not stimulate food intake in patients with surgical procedures involving vagotomy

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Ghrelin, published as a randomized controlled trial.

The objective of the study was to determine whether humans with vagotomy are sensitive to ghrelin.

Why It Was Studied

Patients with gastric or esophageal surgery and transection of the vagus nerve may suffer from appetite and weight loss but without dysphagia or mechanical obstruction to eating.

The gastric hormone ghrelin stimulates food intake and GH release in rodents and man.

Who Took Part

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

Six men and one woman who all had a previous complete truncal vagotomy with lower esophageal or gastric surgery entered and completed the study.

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 Ghrelin and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

As a double-blind Ghrelin study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

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

The design was a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial.

This was a hospital-based study.

After 90 min, a buffet meal was served.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Appetite, Digestive System Surgical Procedures, Eating, Ghrelin, Human Growth Hormone, Peptide Hormones and Postoperative Complications.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Ghrelin.

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 2005 (The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism), a journal based in United States.

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