Young children afflicted with chicken pox and administered with steroids are at a high risk of a more severe virus incidence that could lead to death, according to pediatric oncologists at the Brenner Children’s Hospital, a part of the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

The finding is believed to send warning signals to medical practitioners who have been treating their young patients with chicken pox with steroids.

From News-Medical.Net:

“Steroids are used to treat leukemia and they suppress the immune system,” said Thomas McLean, a pediatric oncologist at Brenner Children’s Hospital. “When a child is exposed to the varicella virus (the virus that causes chicken pox) around the time they are receiving steroid treatment, they are more likely to contract a more severe case of chicken pox.”

McLean and his colleagues studied 697 patients with acute leukemia over a nine-year period. About 16 percent or 110 patients contracted chicken pox. Of those 110 patients, 54 had severe disease, including two deaths. Of the patients whose chicken pox was diagnosed within three weeks of taking steroids, 70 percent had severe infection whereas only 44 percent of those who had not received steroid therapy within three weeks had severe infection. Although the study was limited to patients with leukemia, the findings may apply to other conditions for which steroids are used, McLean said.

“One of the things we need to remember to ask before we prescribe steroid treatment is whether the child has had a recent exposure to chicken pox,” McLean said. “If so, we recommend waiting until the incubation period has passed before beginning steroid therapy.”

Though chicken pox is mild in its nature, it can be devastating in rare cases and it is important to note here that there were as many as 12,000 casualties of chicken pox before the varicella vaccine was discovered.

Tags:  chicken pox, steroid therapy, steroid treatment, Steroids

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According to a study by scientists from the UT Southwestern Medical Center, treating pneumonia patients with steroids and antibiotics is far better than treating them with antibiotics alone.

This study also suggested that the use of steroids is an effective option for treatment of inflammation in the lungs of a pneumonia patient. The study was headed by Dr. Robert Hardy, Study’s Senior Author & Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics.

From News-medical.net:

Adding corticosteroids to traditional antimicrobial therapy might help people with pneumonia recover more quickly than with antibiotics alone, UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists have found.

Unlike the anabolic steroids used to bulk up muscle, corticosteroids are often used to treat inflammation related to infectious diseases, such as bacterial meningitis. Used against other infectious diseases, however, steroid therapy has been shown to be ineffective or even harmful.

In a study available online and in a future issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases, researchers at UT Southwestern show that mice infected with a type of severe bacterial pneumonia and subsequently treated with steroids and antibiotics recovered faster and had far less inflammation in their lungs than mice treated with antibiotics alone.

The study also remarked that a combination of antibiotics and steroids can be considered as one of the best treatment options available in present day times for treating patients during asthma (M pneumoniae infection) attack. It was also said that while antibiotics are good for killing the bug, steroids play an important role by treating inflammation in the lungs.

The findings of this study were supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Tags:  Anabolic steroids, corticosteroids, steroid therapy, Steroids, traditional antimicrobial therapy

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The use of modern immunosuppressive drugs can reduce the need for a steroid therapy as early as seven days after a transplant surgery without an impact on maintenance of functions of the lung, according to a new study by researchers at UC.

Chronic health conditions that are considered to be common to kidney transplant recipients can be minimized via elimination of a daily dose of steroids, as per Steve Woodle, MD, Chief of UC’s transplant surgery division, principal investigator and designer of the study.

From Sciencedaily.com:

“Steroids have long been the primary source of morbidity and complications following successful kidney transplantation,” Woodle says. “This study demonstrates that elimination of even small, daily prednisone (pred-ne-zone) doses does not compromise results while minimizing weight gain, diabetes and bone complications.”

Corticosteroids were the first anti-rejection drug used in transplant patients, dating back to the first transplant surgeries over 50 years ago.

Traditionally patients who have undergone organ transplantation have required life-long steroid treatments given in combination with other drugs that help suppress the body’s immune system and allow the transplanted organ to function properly.

However, the steroid treatment—given as the oral drug, prednisone—can cause serious side effects including cardiovascular disease, high cholesterol and blood pressure, weight gain, diabetes, bone weakness and cataracts.

It was remarked by Woodle that the risk of injection episodes in patients was marginally increased with an early steroid discontinuation process. He hopes that even this minor risk of increased rejection combined with long-term gains would not change much with development of new drugs and modern anti-rejection drugs.

Tags:  corticosteroids, immunosuppressive drugs, steroid, steroid therapy, steroid treatment, Steroids

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The reason why lungs of smokers are resistant to steroid treatment and its solution has been found by scientists from the Imperial College of London.

It is believed that almost 6 percent of population of the United Kingdom is presently suffering from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) - ‘smoker’s lung’, or chronic bronchitis and emphysema. This is considered to be the fourth most cause of mortality in the land of the Queen.

Doctors generally consider steroid treatment as an effective treatment technique for curing inflammatory ailments such as COPD but somehow some of the COPD patients do not respond to steroid therapy as per expectations.

From News-Medical.Net:

Professor Peter Barnes and his colleagues discovered that steroids act as a ‘molecular bridge’ to recruit HDAC2 to the appropriate genes where it can act to switch them off.

The London researchers found that in COPD, levels of HDAC2 are very low compared to normal cells, so that the steroids have no effect in switching off the activated inflammatory genes.

They then found that in lung cells in vitro, and in rats, low doses of a cheap and widely available drug raised the levels of HDAC2 and broke the steroid resistance.

The first stages of clinical trials to test low doses of this drug, theophylline, in COPD patients are now underway. If successful, this may lead to a change in the treatment of COPD and other severe inflammatory diseases that do not respond well to steroid therapy.

Professor Peter Barnes commented, ‘COPD kills tens of thousands of people in the UK every year and currently we can only treat the symptoms, not the underlying problem of inflammation of the lungs. Our work has finally provided an explanation for steroid resistance in COPD, and has allowed us to identify ways to combat this.

Professor Peter Barnes and his colleagues remarked that steroids are highly effective in playing an important role while acting as molecular bridge in the recruitment of HDAC2 (Histone Deacetylase 2), an enzyme, to the concerned genes where it can switch them off.

They also remarked that the levels of HDAC2 are seen to be low when compared to normal cells in the COPD patients. This clearly suggested that the steroids are no longer good enough to bring any positive effect in switching off the activated inflammatory genes. In this direction, a new steroid has been discovered that will have the ability to raise the HDAC2 level to break steroid resistance in COPD patients.

Tags:  chronic bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD, emphysema, smoker’s lung, steroid therapy, steroid treatment, Steroids

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