Cause of acute tubular necrosis affects its prognosis. The Auriculin Anaritide Acute Renal Failure Study Group.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Diuretics, published as a randomized controlled trial.

To test the hypothesis that the cause of ATN affects its clinical outcome.

Why It Was Studied

The cause of ATN can be divided into nephrotoxic, ischemic, or mixed.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

The study compares clinical outcomes of patients enrolled in the placebo arm of a multicenter, randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial of anaritide (Auriculin, synthetic atrial natriuretic peptide, Scios, Mountain View, Calif) in patients with well-defined ATN.

Patients were divided prospectively into groups according to the cause of ATN: pure nephrotoxic, pure ischemic, or mixed nephrotoxic and ischemic.

How the Study Was Run

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

Because people in this Diuretics study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

As a double-blind Diuretics study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

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

Running at several centres spread the Diuretics study over different clinics and patient groups.

Outcomes of interest were dialysis-free survival and all-cause mortality on day 14 and day 21.

The causal groups were compared with respect to the prevalence of several comorbidities suspected of affecting the clinical outcomes.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Atrial Natriuretic Factor, Diuretics, Ischemia, Kidney Tubular Necrosis, Acute, Natriuresis, Peptide Fragments and Prognosis.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Diuretics.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 9 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 1997 (Archives of internal medicine), a journal based in United States.

More context: all human trials.