Glucocorticoid therapy suppresses abnormal secretion of big IGF-II by non-islet cell tumours inducing hypoglycaemia (NICTH)

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Human Growth Hormone and Glucocorticoids in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 4 patients taking part.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

Two groups each of 4 patients, all diagnosed as cases of NICTH, were treated with either hGH or glucocorticoids.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Human Growth Hormone and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Through the use of acidic size exclusion chromatography serum levels of tumour (big) and mature IGF-II were evaluated.

Neutral size exclusion chromatography was used in the separation of molecular species before assay for immunoreactive IGF-II and IGFBP-3 content.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Depression, Chemical, Glucocorticoids, Human Growth Hormone, Hypoglycemia, Insulin-Like Growth Factor Binding Protein 3, Insulin-Like Growth Factor II and Neoplasms.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Human Growth Hormone and Glucocorticoids in 4 patients.

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.

Results are reported in around 3 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 1998 (Clinical endocrinology), a journal based in England.

More context: the related Exogenous HGH, sermorelin & older GHRPs (why they're passed over) library page, all human trials.