N-terminal Pro-B-type natriuretic peptide, vascular disease risk, and cholesterol reduction among 20,536 patients in the MRC/BHF heart protection study

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of BNP (Nesiritide), published as a randomized controlled trial.

The predictive value of N-BNP for occlusive vascular events and the effects of statins in people with high N-BNP levels are uncertain.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 20,536 people taking part.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

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

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

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with BNP (Nesiritide) could be set against what happens without it.

Five baseline N-BNP groups were defined (<386; 386 to 1,171; 1,172 to 2,617; 2,618 to 5,758; and > or =5,759 pg/ml).

What Was Measured

The predictive value of N-BNP for occlusive vascular events and the effects of statins in people with high N-BNP levels are uncertain.

PubMed files the paper under topics including Cardiovascular Diseases, Chi-Square Distribution, Confidence Intervals, Heart Failure, Hypercholesterolemia, Linear Models and Myocardial Infarction.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of BNP (Nesiritide) in 20,536 people.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Its findings take up roughly 8 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2007 (Journal of the American College of Cardiology), a journal based in United States.

More context: the BNP (Nesiritide) compound page, all human trials.