Somatostatin analogues improve health-related quality of life in polycystic liver disease: a pooled analysis of two randomised, placebo-controlled trials

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Somatostatin, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 96 patients were involved.

PubMed indexes the participants as adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

The researchers pooled data from two randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials that evaluated HRQL using the Short-Form 36 (SF-36) in 96 polycystic liver disease patients treated 6-12 months with somatostatin analogues or placebo.

The SF-36 contains a summarizing physical and mental component score and was administered at baseline and at the end of treatment.

How the Study Was Run

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

Because people in this Somatostatin study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

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

Some patients received a placebo instead of Somatostatin, giving a reference point.

The researchers used random effect models to delineate the effect of somatostatin analogues on HRQL.

The researchers determined the effect of demographics, height-adjusted liver volume, change in liver volume, somatostatin analogue-associated side effects with change in HRQL.

In patients with autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease, the researchers estimated the effect of height-adjusted kidney volume and change in kidney volume in relation to HRQL.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Cysts, Liver Diseases, Organ Size, Polycystic Kidney, Autosomal Dominant, Quality of Life and Somatostatin.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Somatostatin in 96 patients.

Its findings take up roughly 6 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2015 (Alimentary pharmacology & therapeutics), a journal based in England.

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