Actions of prolonged ghrelin infusion on gastrointestinal transit and glucose homeostasis in humans

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Ghrelin.

The aim of this study was to evaluate effects of intravenous ghrelin on gastrointestinal motility and glucose homeostasis during a 6-h infusion in humans.

Why It Was Studied

Ghrelin is produced by enteroendocrine cells in the gastric mucosa and stimulates gastric emptying in healthy volunteers and patients with gastroparesis in short-term studies.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 12 volunteers taking part.

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults, men only.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized and double-blind study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Ghrelin and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Neither the volunteers nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Ghrelin, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

Gastric emptying, orocecal transit, colonic transit, postprandial plasma concentrations of glucose, insulin, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), and peptide YY were assessed.

In vitro studies of gastrointestinal muscle contractility were performed.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Appetite, Cecum, Colon, Energy Metabolism, Gastric Emptying, Gastrointestinal Tract and Gastrointestinal Transit.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and double-blind study of Ghrelin in 12 volunteers.

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.

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 2010 (Neurogastroenterology and motility), a journal based in England.

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