Effects of probiotics on ghrelin and lungs in children with acute lung injury: A double-blind randomized, controlled trial

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Ghrelin.

To assess the effects of probiotics on serum ghrelin levels and protection for lungs in children with acute lung injury (ALI).

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are young children, both men and women.

The eligible children with ALI were assigned to either probiotic treatment or an identical placebo for 10 days.

How the Study Was Run

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

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Ghrelin and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received Ghrelin.

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

A time span of 10 days appears in the methods.

This study was performed as a double-blind, randomized, and controlled trial in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU).

Serum ghrelin, SP-A(surfactant protein-A), TNF-α, and IL-6 concentrations were assessed at baseline and at the end of trial.

Meanwhile, pulmonary function test and echocardiography were examined, then VPEF (volume to peak tidal expiratory flow), TPEF/TE (the ratio of time taken to reach peak expiratory flow to total expiratory time), MAP (mean arterial pressure), and PAP (pulmonary artery pressure) were recorded.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Acute Lung Injury, Echocardiography, Ghrelin, Inflammation, Interleukin-6, Lung and Probiotics.

The authors tagged it with the keywords children and inflammatory factor.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Ghrelin over 10 days.

Its findings take up roughly 10 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2018 (Pediatric pulmonology), a journal based in United States.

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