Effect of nesiritide in patients with acute decompensated heart failure

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of BNP (Nesiritide), published as a randomized controlled trial.

Nesiritide is approved in the United States for early relief of dyspnea in patients with acute heart failure.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 7141 patients were involved.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

The researchers randomly assigned 7141 patients who were hospitalized with acute heart failure to receive either nesiritide or placebo for 24 to 168 hours in addition to standard care.

How the Study Was Run

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

Because people in this BNP (Nesiritide) 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 BNP (Nesiritide) study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

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

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Acute Disease, Dyspnea, Heart Failure, Hypotension, Intention to Treat Analysis, Kidney Diseases and Natriuretic Agents.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of BNP (Nesiritide) in 7141 patients.

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

Results are reported in around 7 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2011 (The New England journal of medicine), a journal based in United States.

More context: the BNP (Nesiritide) compound page, all human trials.