Pulsatile Cortisol Feedback on ACTH Secretion Is Mediated by the Glucocorticoid Receptor and Modulated by Gender

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at ACTH (Corticotropin).

During frequent sampling, a bolus of CRH-arginine vasopressin was infused to assess corticotrope responsiveness.

Why It Was Studied

Factors that regulate physiological feedback by pulses of glucocorticoids on the hypothalamic-pituitary unit are sparsely defined in humans in relation to gluco- or mineralocorticoid receptor pathways, gender, age, and the sex steroid milieu.

Who Took Part

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

Healthy middle-aged men (n = 16) and women (n = 25) participated in the study.

This was a randomized, prospective, double-blind, placebo- and saline-controlled study of pulsatile cortisol infusions in low cortisol-clamped volunteers with and without eplerenone (MR blocker) and mifepristone (GR blocker) administration under a low and normal T and estradiol clamp.

How the Study Was Run

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

Because people in this ACTH (Corticotropin) 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 ACTH (Corticotropin), so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

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

The study was conducted at the Mayo Center for Translational Science Activities.

Analytical Methods and Outcomes: Deconvolution and approximate entropy of ACTH profiles were measured.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Adrenocorticotropic Hormone, Eplerenone, Hormone Antagonists, Hydrocortisone, Mifepristone, Mineralocorticoid Receptor Antagonists and Receptors, Glucocorticoid.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of ACTH (Corticotropin).

Results are reported in around 7 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2016 (The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism), a journal based in United States.

More context: the ACTH (Corticotropin) compound page, all human trials.