A study conducted by the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) proved that steroid medications such as dexamethasone do not help treat bronchiolitis among infants. According to the study patients who were treated with a glucocorticoid form of steroid medication, and those who were given placebo exhibited almost the same results.

The team concluded that although steroid medications treat respiratory illnesses such as asthma and croup, they are ineffective in treating bronchiolitis.

From Medical News Today:

The study compared hospitalization rates for 600 children between the ages of 2 months and 12 months who visited emergency rooms with moderate-to-severe bronchiolitis. Patients were treated with either a dose of dexamethasone (a glucocorticoid form of steroid medication) or a placebo and evaluated after one hour, and again at four hours. The hospital admission rate for both groups was identical at nearly 40 percent. Both groups improved during treatment, but the placebo group did as well as the group treated with active medication. The study was conducted in the emergency departments at 20 hospitals across the United States between November and April during a three-year period.

“We learned that a commonly used treatment doesn’t work,” said Howard M. Corneli, M.D., professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah and the principal investigator on the study. “Now that we’ve demonstrated glucocorticoids aren’t effective in treating bronchiolitis, we can focus our efforts on finding better treatments and better preventive strategies.”

Bronchiolitis is a viral lower respiratory infection on infants. It is the leading cause of hospitalization for infants in the United States and accounts for more than 100,000 admissions each year. Bronchiolitis infections begin most frequently with a fever, runny nose, coughing, and wheezing. Most children recover from the illness in eight to 15 days. The majority of children hospitalized for bronchiolitis infections are under 6 months old.

Tags:  bronchiolitis, dexamethasone, glucocorticoids, steroid medications

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A research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found out that steroids called glucocorticoids can cause hypertension and diabetes. The team found that a protein called peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-alpha (PPAR-alpha) is critical in this process because it is activated by fatty acids that stimulate the diseases. The findings help explain the high incidence of diabetes and hypertension in obese individuals.

PPAR-alpha is found in the liver, kidney, muscles, blood vessels and other organs. It is activated by fatty acids, while glucocorticoids alter fatty acid processing. This correlation led the research team to assume that the two may act together to produce the disease-causing effects.

From Bio-Medicine:

The team found that when given the glucocorticoid dexamethasone, mice lacking only LDLR had increased levels of insulin, fasting glucose and leptin, all signs of diabetes. The animals also became less hypoglycemic when given insulin, suggesting that they were developing insulin resistance, the precursor to diabetes. Mice lacking both LDLR and PPAR-alpha showed no signs of diabetes.

The team also examined human liver cells in a petri dish. When PPAR-alpha was activated and steroids were added, expression of genes related to glucose production tripled.

“The scientific community hasn’t fully appreciated the potentially important role of the liver in these conditions,” Semenkovich says. “These results strongly suggest that the liver is the key to controlling blood pressure and glucose, and our preliminary evidence with human liver cells strongly suggests that the results in mice are relevant to human disease.”

The researchers claim that the results in the mice trials are relevant to human, hence they claimed that people who are overweight or obese experience diabetes and hypertension because they have higher glucocorticoids. Similarly, patients who are treated with glucocorticoids medication have higher risk of developing these diseases since their bodies receive more glucocorticoids.

Tags:  diabetes, glucocorticoids, hypertension, Steroids

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