According to a study by researchers from the UT Southwestern Medical Center, steroids can easily facilitate the recovery process for patients affected by pneumonia and even better than use of antibiotics alone.

It was suggested by the study that health of an affected patients can be restored back when steroids and antibiotics are combined.

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.

Dr. Robert Hardy, Study’s Senior Author & Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, said that clinic trial would soon be performed for confirm the finding. It is worth noting that a combination of steroids and antibiotics can provide relief to a patient in the midst of an asthma attack (M pneumoniae infection).

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Tags: anabolic steroids, corticosteroids, steroid therapy, steroids, traditional antimicrobial therapy

Posted in Steroid Cycles, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, buy steroids, steroid nation | No Comments/Questions

Corticosteroids may not be an amicable option when it comes to improve survival in patients with late-stage acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).

This finding was a part of results from the ARDS Clinical Research Network of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health.

From News-Medical.Net:

“These findings provide important information to help us determine the safest and most effective ways to care for patients with this devastating condition,” said NHLBI Director Elizabeth G. Nabel, MD. “Whether and how to use steroids to treat ARDS patients have been important questions for years. We now have better evidence of the effect of this treatment to help clinicians and patients make more informed decisions.”

There is no specific drug treatment for ARDS. The focus of care is to get enough oxygen into the blood until the lungs are functioning again. Patients are placed in the intensive care unit and supported with mechanical ventilators and fluids. Some patients recover and can breathe on their own within a week or so. Others might need to be on mechanical support to help with breathing for longer periods of time, but they can develop long-term complications from ventilator use or other treatments.

ARDS is a sudden and life-endangering lung condition that tends to affect approximately 150,000 people on a yearly basis in the United States alone.

Gordon Bernard, MD, director of the Division of Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and chair of the Steering Committee for the NHLBI ARDS Clinical Research Network, said that physicians, patients, and the patients’ families need to grapple with the pros and cons of steroid treatment for ARDS.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Tags: acute respiratory distress syndrome, ARDS, corticosteroids, steroids

Posted in Steroid Cycles, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, buy steroids, steroid nation | No Comments/Questions

According to a review appearing in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, inadequate asthma control is present in 26% to 45% of children despite the fact that asthma is one of the most common of all chronic diseases among children.

This review was produced as an initiative of the Canadian Thoracic Society and provided key points to distinguish between transient asthma and chronic asthma in preschoolers and how to manage both asthma forms.

From News-Medical.Net:

For children with intermittent asthma, using inhaled corticosteroids only during attacks does not appear to be effective. Regular therapy with inhaled steroids should be used for children with more severe intermittent or persistent symptoms. Treatment with leukotriene receptor antagonists during the viral season may help to reduce symptoms and visits to health care providers. The possibility of another condition should be considered if children do not respond to optimal therapy.

The authors state that more research is needed to evaluate effectiveness of treatments in young children.

The review is expected to offer invaluable insights to practitioners and relief to their young asthmatic patients.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Tags: Asthma, chronic asthma, corticosteroids, transient asthma

Posted in Steroid Cycles, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, buy steroids, steroid nation | No Comments/Questions

An FDA-approved drug, naltrexone, presently recommended and used for easing symptoms of withdrawal from substance abuse could be an effective option for providing relief to people with Crohn’s disease.

This finding was disclosed by a pilot study by Penn State College of Medicine.

Crohn’s disease is believed to affect nearly 500,000 people in the United States alone.

From News-Medical.Net:

Typical treatment for Crohn’s involves using steroids or corticosteroids, which suppress the immune system and can have other toxic side effects. Treatment is often time-intensive and expensive, as well.

“This is a novel approach to treating a common disease, and it’s simple, it’s safe, and it costs far less than current standards of treatment,” Smith said. “We don’t yet know the exact mechanisms involved in how it works, but we’re working on that as well.”

Smith initiated the study using a Dean’s Feasibility Grant — a program designed to encourage investigators to design trials in their area of expertise and seek outside funding. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently awarded the College of Medicine $500,000 for the team to continue the study.

Jill P. Smith, a gastroenterology specialist and researcher at the College of Medicine and Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, presented her findings in Los Angeles at the National Association of Gastroenterologists annual Digestive Diseases Week conference.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Tags: corticosteroids, Crohn's disease, Naltrexone, steroids, substance abuse

Posted in Steroid Cycles, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, buy steroids, steroid nation | No Comments/Questions

Pneumonia patients have something as a relief now.

The combination of corticosteroids to the traditional antimicrobial therapy may be regarded as an effectual form of treatment for helping pneumonia patients recover faster than with antibiotics alone, as per scientists from the UT Southwestern Medical Center.

From Sciencedaily.com:

Although antimicrobials remain the primary therapy for M pneumoniae infection, there have been several reports in recent years about physicians adding steroids to the treatment regimen of patients with severe cases, Dr. Hardy said. The problem, he said, is that those were individual case reports.

“They never had a control group, so it was impossible to tell what impact the addition of steroids had on recovery,” he said.

The new findings not only suggest that giving antibiotics with steroids can help individuals with pneumonia get better faster, but also suggest a potentially more effective therapy for someone in the midst of an asthma attack due to M pneumoniae infection. Up to 20 percent of asthma attacks in children and adults have been shown to be triggered by this bacterium.

Dr. Robert Hardy, associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics and the study’s senior author, noted that antibiotics and steroids form a synergy together. While the antibiotics kill the bugs, steroids treat lung inflammation.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Tags: antibiotics, antimicrobial therapy, corticosteroids, pneumonia, steroids

Posted in Steroid Cycles, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, buy steroids, steroid nation | No Comments/Questions

Corticosteroids have been hailed as powerful drugs for treating inflammatory conditions such as asthma. Although the anti-inflammatory drugs offer instant relief to the patients, they bring severe side effects.

But the hope of drugs without adverse side effects has been realized by a team spearheaded by Dr. Henry J. Lee who has led antedrug research in anti-inflammatory, anti-AIDS and anti-cancer drugs for nearly 30 years.

These drugs, known as antedrugs, have been developed in a lab at Florida A&M’s College of Pharmacy.

From Sciencedaily.com:

Antedrug design is a new approach to create safer drugs that attack a problem such as inflammation then quickly become inactive before they can cause damage. The primary objective of this study was to synthesize a new group of corticosteroids that have anti-asthmatic and anti-inflammatory properties without adverse side effects.

The researchers synthesized new antedrugs, isoxazoline derivatives, from prednisolone. They then tested the derivatives in a test tube and found that antedrugs effectively reduced inflammation. In fact, they found isoxazoline derivatives were five times more potent than prednisolone in binding affinities to the cell corticosteroids receptors and reducing inflammation.

This study entitled as Anti-Inflammatory Activities of New Steroidal Antedrugs Isoxazoline Derivatives was conducted by Drs. Henry J. Lee, Younes J. Errahali, LeeShawn D. Thomas, Brenda G. Arnold and Glory B. Brown, all of the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tallahassee, Florida.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Tags: antedrugs, Asthma, corticosteroids, prednisolone

Posted in Steroid Cycles, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, buy steroids, steroid nation | No Comments/Questions

Asthma is one of most common chronic diseases and a major reason for admissions to hospitals in young children yet 26-45 percent of children face inadequate asthma control, as per a review in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

The review was produced as an initiative of the Canadian Thoracic Society and incorporated the latest scientific information obtained from randomized controlled trials since the Canadian Pediatric Asthma Consensus Guidelines were published in 2003.

From Sciencedaily.com:

The review provides key points for distinguishing between transient asthma and chronic asthma in preschoolers and information on managing both types.

For children with intermittent asthma, using inhaled corticosteroids only during attacks does not appear to be effective. Regular therapy with inhaled steroids should be used for children with more severe intermittent or persistent symptoms. Treatment with leukotriene receptor antagonists during the viral season may help to reduce symptoms and visits to health care providers. The possibility of another condition should be considered if children do not respond to optimal therapy.

It was stated by the authors that more research is required for evaluating the effectiveness of treatment options in young children.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Tags: Asthma, chronic asthma, corticosteroids, Inhaled steroids, steroids, transient asthma

Posted in Steroid Cycles, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, buy steroids, steroid nation | No Comments/Questions

There is no benefit of adding steroids to local anesthetics to treat daily headaches, as per a study by neurologists at the Jefferson Headache Center at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.

Avi Ashkenazi, M.D., assistant professor of neurology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, said that no evidence of additional benefit from having a steroid was noticed during a study of 29 men and women with chronic daily headaches.

From News-Medical.Net:

According to Avi Ashkenazi, M.D., assistant professor of neurology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, greater occipital nerve block (GONB) is a technique to treat acute headaches by locally injecting anesthetics such as lidocaine just under the skin to provide acute pain relief for acute headache attacks and migraines. Such treatments can work quickly, perhaps in seconds or by five to 10 minutes, and its effectiveness could last from hours to two or three days to several weeks. Treatment can be repeated if needed, he notes, and it has few side effects.

There are two ways to block the occipital nerves: by injecting a local anesthetic alone or by adding an anti-inflammatory steroid along with the anesthetic. No data exist whether one is better than the other, but the use of corticosteroids is controversial because of their potential side effects, such as hair loss at the site of injection. He notes that there is no consensus among headache experts about steroid use for headache.

Dr. Ashkenazi and his team are of the view that they will soon be able to find out that steroids can lengthen the anti-inflammatory effect of the injection.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Tags: anesthetics, corticosteroids, GONB, lidocaine, steroids

Posted in Steroid Cycles, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, buy steroids, steroid nation | No Comments/Questions

According to an article in an issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, high dosages of corticosteroids can possibly be associated with an increased risk for atrial fibrillation, which is a heart rhythm disorder featured by irregular heartbeats.

Atrial fibrillation is the common type of irregular heartbeat and tends to affect about 4 percent of elderly population over the age of 60 years.

From News-Medical.Net:

Corticosteroids could affect heart function through several different mechanisms, the authors write. The medication may affect the balance of potassium in heart muscle cells, which in turn causes the muscle to contract irregularly. Corticosteroids also may cause retention of sodium and fluid, which can lead to high blood pressure, congestive heart failure or enlarged atria, all risk factors for atrial fibrillation.

“Our findings suggest that patients receiving high-dose corticosteroid therapy are at increased risk of developing atrial fibrillation,” the authors conclude. “Therefore, careful monitoring of these patients by clinical examination and by performing an electrocardiogram before and after high-dose (pulse) therapy could increase the chance to diagnose and treat this serious arrhythmia as early as possible. Because persons who develop atrial fibrillation are at increased risk of serious cardiovascular complications such as heart failure and ischemic stroke and have a chance to develop chronic atrial fibrillation, early detection of atrial fibrillation is essential.”

The authors wrote that corticosteroids, which are often prescribed for asthma and other lung diseases as well as arthritis, allergies and blood cancer, have been associated with atrial fibrillation.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Tags: Asthma, atrial fibrillation, corticosteroid, corticosteroids

Posted in Steroid Cycles, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, buy steroids, steroid nation | No Comments/Questions

Patients suffering from cystic fibrosis (CF) and not making use of inhaled corticosteroids show no positive or negative effects in terms of major disease factors when compared to those regularly using corticosteroids.

Disease factors include the amount of lung function decline, number of prescribed antibiotics, onset time of acute chest exacerbation or frequency of using a bronchodilator.

From News-Medical.Net:

“Oral corticosteroids slow the progression of CF lung disease, but long-term use is precluded by unacceptable side effects,” said Dr. Balfour-Lynn. “A systematic review of inhaled corticosteroid use in CF revealed 10 randomized controlled trials, with six having been published. The trials studied 293 adults and children. Although there was variable methodological quality among the studies, the conclusion was that there was ‘no evidence from existing trials to support the practice of prescribing inhaled steroids in cystic fibrosis.’”

The authors noted that 52 percent of the patients were on high-dose inhaled corticosteroids (1,000 micrograms or more per day). At those levels, the drug can lead to significant symptoms related to adrenal suppression and insufficiency. Also, among pediatric patients, slowing of linear growth has been a problem for individuals taking the drug for a year or more.

It was concluded by Ian M. Balfour-Lynn, M.D., F.R.C.P., of the Department of Pediatric Respiratory Medicine at Royal Brompton Hospital in London, and six associates, that it is safe for patients to stop use of inhaled corticosteroids to reduce their drug burden for saving money as well as minimizing potential adverse side effects.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Tags: antibiotics, corticosteroids, cystic fibrosis, inhaled corticosteroid, steroids

Posted in Steroid Cycles, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, buy steroids, steroid nation | No Comments/Questions