The effects of Berberis vulgaris consumption on plasma levels of IGF-1, IGFBPs, PPAR-γ and the expression of angiogenic genes in women with benign breast disease: a randomized controlled clinical trial

What Was Tested

Researchers studied IGF-1 LR3 in this randomized controlled trial publication.

The present study was designed to investigate the effects of Berberis vulgaris (BV) juice consumption on plasma levels of insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), IGF-binding proteins (IGFBPs), and the expression of PPAR-γ, VEGF and HIF in women with benign breast disease.

Why It Was Studied

Registered 10 July 2013 (retrospectively registered).

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 85 patients taking part.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were young adults, adults and middle-aged adults, women only.

This parallel design randomized, double-blind controlled clinical trial was conducted on 85 eligible patients diagnosed with benign breast disease.

Participants, caregivers and those who assessed laboratory analyses were blinded to the assignments.

How the Study Was Run

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

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got IGF-1 LR3 and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Neither the patients nor the staff measuring them knew who was on IGF-1 LR3, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

Some patients received a placebo instead of IGF-1 LR3, giving a reference point.

The IGF-1 LR3 group and the comparison group ran side by side rather than switching.

The timeline in the abstract includes 8 weeks.

Plasma levels of biomarkers were measured at baseline and after 8 weeks by ELISA.

Quantitative real-time PCR was used to measure the fold change in the expression of each interested gene.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Berberis, Breast, Breast Neoplasms, Fruit and Vegetable Juices, Hypoxia-Inducible Factor 1, Insulin-Like Growth Factor I and PPAR gamma.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Benign breast disease, Berberis vulgaris, HIF and VEGF.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of IGF-1 LR3 in 85 patients over 8 weeks.

Its findings take up roughly 7 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2019 (BMC complementary and alternative medicine), a journal based in England.

More context: the IGF-1 LR3 compound page, all human trials.