The efficacy and safety of thymosin α1 for sepsis (TESTS): multicentre, double blinded, randomised, placebo controlled, phase 3 trial

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Thymosin Alpha-1, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 1106 adults taking part.

PubMed indexes the participants as teenagers, young adults, adults, middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

1106 adults aged 18-85 years with a diagnosis of sepsis according to sepsis-3 criteria and randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to receive thymosin α1 (n=552) or placebo (n=554).

A stratified block method was used for randomisation, and participants were stratified by age (<60 and ≥60 years) and centre.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and multicenter.

The adults were allocated by chance, so the Thymosin Alpha-1 group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Blinding on both sides kept the adults and researchers unaware of who received Thymosin Alpha-1.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Thymosin Alpha-1 group a baseline to be compared against.

More than one site took part, so the adults came from several places.

Multicentre, double blinded, placebo controlled phase 3 trial.

22 centres in China, September 2016 to December 2020.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Sepsis, Thymalfasin, China and Thymosin.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Thymosin Alpha-1 in 1106 adults.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Its findings take up roughly 6 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2025 (BMJ (Clinical research ed.)), a journal based in England.

More context: the Thymosin Alpha-1 compound page, all human trials.