Continental differences in clinical characteristics, management, and outcomes in patients hospitalized with worsening heart failure results from the EVEREST (Efficacy of Vasopressin Antagonism in Heart Failure: Outcome Study with Tolvaptan) program

What Was Tested

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

Who Took Part

The study group was 4,133 patients.

The age groups tagged for this paper are middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

Baseline characteristics, mortality, and outcomes were analyzed across North America (n = 1,251), South America (n = 688), Western Europe (564 patients), and Eastern Europe (n = 1,619).

How the Study Was Run

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

Because people in this Vasopressin 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 Vasopressin study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

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

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Benzazepines, Heart Failure, Hospitalization, Internationality, Kaplan-Meier Estimate, Myocardial Revascularization and Pacemaker, Artificial.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Vasopressin in 4,133 patients.

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

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 6 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2008 (Journal of the American College of Cardiology), a journal based in United States.

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