Octreotide acts on anorectal physiology: a dynamic study in healthy subjects

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Glucagon and Octreotide, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Somatostatin is localized in the intestinal and pelvic nerves of the anorectum and it seems to act as an important neurotransmitter.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 12 volunteers taking part.

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

This was a placebo-controlled, randomized, double-blinded crossover study performed in 12 healthy volunteers who received octreotide, glucagon, or placebo intravenously on separate days.

How the Study Was Run

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

The volunteers were allocated by chance, so the Glucagon group and the comparison group should start out alike.

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

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

Each person switched between Glucagon and the comparison at some point, usually with a gap in between.

During each sequence, several pressure steps in 3 different protocols of rectal isobaric distension were applied with an electronic barostat.

Manometric responses of the anal canal, adaptative volumes, and perception scores of the rectum were recorded.

What Was Measured

Somatostatin is localized in the intestinal and pelvic nerves of the anorectum and it seems to act as an important neurotransmitter.

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Anal Canal, Analysis of Variance, Antidiarrheals, Gastrointestinal Agents, Gastrointestinal Motility, Glucagon and Manometry.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Glucagon and Octreotide in 12 volunteers.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

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 1998 (Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Glucagon compound page and the Octreotide compound page, all human trials.