Glucagon-like peptide-1 is involved in sodium and water homeostasis in humans.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Glucagon.

The effect of GLP-1 on thirst, water intake and on osmoregulation has, however, not been examined in detail in humans.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 8 volunteers taking part.

PubMed indexes the participants as adults, men only.

Seventeen healthy male subjects were enrolled in two double-blind, placebo-controlled studies.

In part C, intestinal biopsies along the gastrointestinal tract were obtained from 14 healthy subjects.

How the Study Was Run

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

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Glucagon and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

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

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

Sodium excretion and water intake were measured.

Expression of human GLP-1 receptor mRNA was measured by real-time polymerase chain reaction.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Analysis of Variance, Area Under Curve, Blood Glucose, Body Water, Glucagon-Like Peptide 1, Homeostasis and Natriuresis.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Glucagon in 8 volunteers.

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 8 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2006 (Digestion), a journal based in Switzerland.

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