Estradiol regulates GH-releasing peptide's interactions with GH-releasing hormone and somatostatin in postmenopausal women

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Exogenous HGH, sermorelin & older GHRPs (why they're passed over) and Somatostatin in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Estrogen stimulates pulsatile secretion of GH, via mechanisms that are largely unknown.

An untested hypothesis is that estradiol (E₂) drives GH secretion by amplifying interactions among GH-releasing hormone (GHRH), somatostatin (SS), and GH-releasing peptide (GHRP).

Who Took Part

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

The design comprised double-blind randomized prospective administration of transdermal E₂ vs placebo to healthy postmenopausal women (n=24) followed by pulsatile GHRH or SS infusions for 13 h overnight with or without continuous GHRP2 stimulation.

How the Study Was Run

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

Because people in this Exogenous HGH, sermorelin & older GHRPs (why they're passed over) 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 Exogenous HGH, sermorelin & older GHRPs (why they're passed over).

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Exogenous HGH, sermorelin & older GHRPs (why they're passed over) could be set against what happens without it.

End points were mean concentrations, deconvolved secretion, and approximate entropy (ApEn; a regularity measure) of GH.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Arginine, Body Mass Index, Estradiol, Estrogen Replacement Therapy, Feedback, Physiological, Growth Hormone-Releasing Hormone and Human Growth Hormone.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Exogenous HGH, sermorelin & older GHRPs (why they're passed over) and Somatostatin.

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2014 (European journal of endocrinology), a journal based in England.

More context: the Exogenous HGH, sermorelin & older GHRPs (why they're passed over) compound page and the Somatostatin compound page, all human trials.