Short-term estradiol supplementation potentiates low-dose ghrelin action in the presence of GHRH or somatostatin in older women

Plain-language guide to PMID 24203062 (2014): double-blind randomized controlled trial study of Ghrelin and Somatostatin.

Key Facts

PMID: 24203062
Journal: The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism
Year: 2014
Study type: Randomized Controlled Trial
Authors: Norman C et al. (8 authors)
DOI: 10.1210/jc.2013-3043

What This Study Did, in Plain Language

What Was Tested

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

SUBJECTS, SETTING, AND DESIGN: Healthy postmenopausal women were treated with placebo (n=12) or 17β-estradiol (E2) (n=12) at the Center for Translational Science Activities in a randomized double-blind prospective study.

Why It Was Studied

Ghrelin is a potent gastric-derived GH-releasing peptide.

How ghrelin interacts with sex steroids, GHRH, and somatostatin (SS) is not known.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, women only.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Ghrelin group and the comparison group should start out alike.

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

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Ghrelin group a baseline to be compared against.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Drug Synergism, Estradiol, Estrogen Replacement Therapy, Ghrelin, Growth Hormone-Releasing Hormone, Postmenopause and Somatostatin.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

Its findings take up roughly 4 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 (The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism), a journal based in United States.

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

Our Notes on the Compounds

Ghrelin: A 28-amino-acid stomach hormone that signals hunger and triggers growth hormone release; studied in human trials as an infusion.

Somatostatin: A 14-amino-acid hormone that switches off the release of several other hormones, including growth hormone and insulin.

GHRH (Growth Hormone-Releasing Hormone): The 44-amino-acid hypothalamic hormone that tells the pituitary to release growth hormone; sermorelin and tesamorelin are analogs.

Source: PubMed record. This explanation is written by PeptideWhiz from the public record. For research and education only. Not medical advice; no dosing information is given.