Regulation of Pulsatile and Entropic ACTH Secretion Under Fixed Exogenous Secretagogue Clamps

What Was Tested

Researchers studied ACTH (Corticotropin) and CRH (Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone) in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) secretion is controlled by unobservable hypothalamic corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) and arginine vasopressin (AVP) pulses.

Clamping exogenous CRH or AVP input could allow indirect quantification of the impact of the endogenous heterotypic hormone.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 28 adults taking part.

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

The researchers conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study in 28 healthy adults (16 men).

Volunteers underwent a sex-steroid clamp and a cortisol clamp.

How the Study Was Run

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

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.

Blinding on both sides kept the adults and researchers unaware of who received ACTH (Corticotropin).

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with ACTH (Corticotropin) could be set against what happens without it.

In the crossover set-up each of the adults took both ACTH (Corticotropin) and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

ACTH was measured over 10 hours by 10-minute sampling during each of four randomized intravenous (IV) secretagogue clamps (i.e., continuous IV CRH, AVP, both peptides, or saline).

Desensitization was tested by bolus injection of the noninfused peptide.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Adrenocorticotropic Hormone, Arginine Vasopressin, Constriction, Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone, Gonadal Steroid Hormones, Hydrocortisone and Leuprolide.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of ACTH (Corticotropin) and CRH (Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone) in 28 adults.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

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 2017 (The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism), a journal based in United States.

More context: the ACTH (Corticotropin) compound page and the CRH (Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone) compound page, all human trials.