Effect of intramuscular ACTH versus oral prednisolone on the developmental trajectories of children with West syndrome over 24 months: A randomised control study

What Was Tested

Researchers studied ACTH (Corticotropin) in this randomized controlled trial publication.

To assess the developmental progression and compare the developmental attainments of children treated with two hormonal therapies for infantile spasms (IS) over two years (seizure and EEG outcomes of this RCT published previously).

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as infants and young children, men only.

All underwent Bayley III Infant and Toddler Assessments in cognitive (Cog), receptive (RC) and expressive (EC) communication, fine (FM) and gross (GM) motor developmental subsets at baseline (T0), one-year (T1) and two-years (T2).

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got ACTH (Corticotropin) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

A time span of 14 days appears in the methods.

Newly diagnosed infants with IS were randomised to receive adrenocorticotrophin (ACTH) or prednisolone for 14 days.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Adrenocorticotropic Hormone, Hormones, Prednisolone and Spasms, Infantile.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Developmental trajectories, Infantile spasms and Treatment with hormonal therapies.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of ACTH (Corticotropin) over 14 days.

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 2021 (European journal of paediatric neurology : EJPN : official journal of the European Paediatric Neurology Society), a journal based in England.

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