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Urocortin-2 infusion in acute decompensated heart failure: findings from the UNICORN study (urocortin-2 in the treatment of acute heart failure as an adjunct over conventional therapy)
Plain-language guide to PMID 24621976 (2013): double-blind randomized controlled trial study of Urocortin.
Key Facts
- PMID
- 24621976
- Journal
- JACC. Heart failure
- Year
- 2013
- Study type
- Randomized Controlled Trial
- Authors
- Chan WY et al. (5 authors)
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.jchf.2013.07.003
What This Study Did, in Plain Language
What Was Tested
Researchers studied Urocortin in this randomized controlled trial publication.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of urocortin-2 as adjunct therapy in acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF).
Why It Was Studied
Urocortin-2 produced favorable integrated effects in experimental heart failure but there are no equivalent human data.
The researchers describe the first therapeutic study of urocortin-2 infusion in ADHF.
Who Took Part
PubMed indexes the participants as middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.
Changes in vital signs, plasma neurohormonal and renal indices during treatment were compared using repeated-measures analysis of covariance.
Ten patients in each arm underwent more detailed invasive hemodynamic evaluation.
How the Study Was Run
The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.
Because people in this Urocortin study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.
Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Urocortin, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.
The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Urocortin could be set against what happens without it.
What Was Measured
Topics PubMed links to this paper include Acute Disease, Combined Modality Therapy, Heart Failure and Urocortins.
Author keywords: acute heart failure, double-blind method, hormone, randomized controlled trial and urocortin-2.
What This Means in Plain Language
The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Urocortin.
The abstract goes on to report its results in about 8 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.
The publication is from 2013 (JACC. Heart failure), a journal based in United States.
More context: the Urocortin compound page, all human trials.
Our Notes on the Compound
Urocortin: A family of peptides related to CRH that act on the heart and stress-response system; studied in heart failure trials.
Related Pages
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.