Vasopressin compared with norepinephrine augments the decline of plasma cytokine levels in septic shock

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Vasopressin in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Their hypotheses were that changes in plasma cytokine levels over 24 hours differ between survivors and nonsurvivors, and that there are different effects of vasopressin and norepinephrine on plasma cytokine levels in septic shock.

Why It Was Studied

Changes in plasma cytokine levels may predict mortality, and therapies (vasopressin versus norepinephrine) could change plasma cytokine levels in early septic shock.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 394 patients taking part.

PubMed indexes the participants as teenagers, young adults, adults, middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized and double-blind 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.

Blinding on both sides kept the patients and researchers unaware of who received Vasopressin.

The researchers used hierarchical clustering and principal components analysis of the baseline cytokine concentrations to subgroup cytokines; the researchers then compared survivors to nonsurvivors (28 d) and compared vasopressin- versus norepinephrine-induced changes in cytokine levels over 24 hours.

What Was Measured

Changes in plasma cytokine levels may predict mortality, and therapies (vasopressin versus norepinephrine) could change plasma cytokine levels in early septic shock.

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Adrenergic alpha-Agonists, Biomarkers, Cytokines, Disease Progression, Norepinephrine, Shock, Septic and Survival Rate.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and double-blind study of Vasopressin in 394 patients.

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

Results are reported in around 10 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2013 (American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine), a journal based in England.

More context: the Vasopressin compound page.