Putative somatostatin suppression potentiates adrenocorticotropin secretion driven by ghrelin and human corticotropin-releasing hormone

What Was Tested

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

Their objective was to test the hypothesis that endogenous SS restrains ghrelin and CRH-stimulated ACTH secretion, thereby linking all three, ghrelin, CRH, and SS, with ACTH secretion.

Why It Was Studied

Ghrelin is a 28-amino-acid Ser(3)-octanoylated peptide, and CRH is a 41-amino-acid peptide, both of which stimulate ACTH secretion.

In principle, actions of these agonists could be subject to inhibitory modulation by hypothalamic somatostatin (SS).

Who Took Part

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

Ten healthy postmenopausal women participated in the study.

Interventions included iv injection of saline, ghrelin, human CRH, or both after an infusion of saline vs. l-arginine to putatively inhibit SS outflow (eight visits per subject).

How the Study Was Run

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

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

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.

Each person switched between Ghrelin and the comparison at some point, usually with a gap in between.

The researchers conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover interventional study at an academic medical center.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Adrenocorticotropic Hormone, Arginine, Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone, Drug Combinations, Ghrelin, Models, Biological and Peptide Hormones.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

Its findings take up roughly 6 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 (The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism), a journal based in United States.

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