Lanreotide reduces the volume of polycystic liver: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Somatostatin and Lanreotide in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Therapy for polycystic liver is invasive, expensive, and has disappointing long-term results.

The researchers evaluated the effects of lanreotide, a somatostatin analogue, in patients with polycystic liver because of autosomal-dominant (AD) PKD or autosomal-dominant polycystic liver disease (PCLD).

Who Took Part

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

How the Study Was Run

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

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

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received Somatostatin.

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

The researchers performed a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in 2 tertiary referral centers.

The primary end point was the difference in total liver volume, measured by computerized tomography at weeks 0 and 24.

Analyses were performed on an intention-to-treat basis.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Antineoplastic Agents, Cysts, Liver Diseases, Liver Function Tests, Organ Size, Peptides, Cyclic and Polycystic Kidney, Autosomal Dominant.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

Results are reported in around 5 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2009 (Gastroenterology), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Somatostatin compound page and the Lanreotide compound page.