Effects of intravenous thyrotropin-releasing hormone on (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose uptake in human brown adipose tissue: a randomized controlled trial

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at TRH (Thyrotropin-Releasing Hormone).

Although thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) is known to activate BAT in several mammals, this has not been reported in humans.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, men only.

During the dynamic scan, blood was withdrawn for measurement of thyroid hormone and catecholamine concentrations.

How the Study Was Run

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

The participants were allocated by chance, so the TRH (Thyrotropin-Releasing Hormone) group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on TRH (Thyrotropin-Releasing Hormone), so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with TRH (Thyrotropin-Releasing Hormone) could be set against what happens without it.

In the crossover set-up each of the participants took both TRH (Thyrotropin-Releasing Hormone) and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

A randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, cross-over trial.

BAT activity was measured as standardized 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) uptake and glucose metabolic rate (MRglu) using dynamic PET/CT imaging.

This trial is registered with The Netherlands National Trial Register (number NTR5512).

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Adipose Tissue, Brown, Administration, Intravenous, Cold Temperature, Fluorodeoxyglucose F18, Healthy Volunteers, Hormones and Positron Emission Tomography Computed Tomography.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of TRH (Thyrotropin-Releasing Hormone).

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 2018 (European journal of endocrinology), a journal based in England.

More context: the TRH (Thyrotropin-Releasing Hormone) compound page, all human trials.