[Effects of intensive insulin therapy on plasma nitric oxide and endothelin-1 levels in patients undergoing cardiac surgery under cardiopulmonary bypass]

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Endothelin-1 in this randomized controlled trial publication.

To investigate the effects of intensive insulin therapy on plasma nitric oxide (NO) and endothelin-1 (ET-1) levels in patients undergoing cardiac valve replacement under cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB).

Who Took Part

The study group was 36 patients.

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

A total of 36 patients were randomly assigned to routine therapy (RT) group and intensive insulin therapy (IT) group, with 18 patients in each group.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized.

The patients were allocated by chance, so the Endothelin-1 group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Levels of plasma NO and ET-1 in both groups were respectively measured before surgical anesthesia, at the initiation of CPB, and 0 h, 4 h, 12 h, 24 h and 48 h after the termination of CPB.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Cardiopulmonary Bypass, Endothelin-1, Hyperglycemia, Hypoglycemic Agents, Insulin, Insulin Infusion Systems and Nitric Oxide.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Endothelin-1 in 36 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.

Results are reported in around 6 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2008 (Zhonghua wai ke za zhi [Chinese journal of surgery]), a journal based in China.

More context: the Endothelin-1 compound page, all human trials.