A research by scientists at the University of Bristol and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), USA has suggested that intermittent signaling by steroid hormones has the potential of affecting the manner by which genes are expressed in rodents.

This finding is expected to provide significant implications to understand how steroids operate and open up novel avenues for new therapies.

From News-Medical.Net:

In this new study, the researchers demonstrate that ultradian hormone stimulation induces the pulsed expression of genes (known as gene pulsing) over the same period, both in cultured cells and in animal models. Initially, the researchers administered corticosterone, a naturally occurring glucocorticoid hormone in rodents, in a pulsed manner to cultured mouse cells and then observed that the levels of newly synthesized RNA from glucocorticoid receptor-regulated genes tracked precisely with the hormone pulses.

The reported research results argue that gene pulsing regulated by glucocorticoid receptors is directly linked to varying levels of gene activity. Professor Stafford Lightman, head of the Henry Wellcome Laboratories for Integrative Neuroscience and Endocrinology, at the University of Bristol, said: “We have previously shown that the hormone cortisol is released in pulses in man as well as rodents. The present results now show that this pattern of hormone release is critical for good health and provides a novel concept for new drug design.”

The findings were published online and appeared in the September 2009 issue of Nature Cell Biology.

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As per a study that was presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), the combination of an ultrasound-guided technique with steroid injection is 95 percent effective to relieve plantar fasciitis, a common and painful foot problem.

Luca M. Sconfienza, M.D., from Italy’s University of Genoa and lead author of the study, remarked that there is an absence of a widely accepted therapy when first-line treatments fail to relieve the pain of plantar fasciitis.

From News-Medical.Net:

For this study, Dr. Sconfienza and colleagues used a new ultrasound-guided technique, along with steroid injection, on 44 patients with plantar fasciitis that was unresponsive to conservative treatments.

After injection of a small amount of anesthesia, the anesthetic needle is used to repeatedly puncture the site where the patient feels the pain. This technique is known as dry-needling. Dry-needling creates a small amount of local bleeding that helps to heal the fasciitis. Lastly, a steroid is injected around the fascia to eliminate the inflammation and pain. The technique is performed with ultrasound guidance to improve accuracy and to avoid injecting the steroids directly into the plantar fascia, which could result in rupture.

After the 15-minute procedure, symptoms disappeared for 42 of the study’s 44 patients (95 percent) within three weeks.

Plantar fasciitis, the most common cause of heel pain, affects approximately one million people on a yearly basis in the United States alone.

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According to a review of the literature by researchers at The University of Auckland, steroid treatment for osteoarthritis knee victims does not progress disease as previously thought.

Associate-Professor Bruce Arroll, from the School of Population Health at the University, remarked that osteoarthritic knee pain is one of the primary causes of disability amongst older people.

From News-Medical.Net:

“Previously it was thought that you could give sufferers about 20 mgs of the steroid cortisone (prednisone) for a couple of weeks, but that it promotes disease progression if it is used any longer.”

“From reviewing all the hospital-based research, we have found that there was no evidence that cortisone progresses the disease. In fact, it provides an effective pain relief for up to five months particularly if the dose is increased to between 40 and 120mgs,” Dr Arroll says.

There is no cure, other than surgical joint replacement, for knee osteoarthritis, but Dr Arroll says the study gives hope of pain relief for sufferers.

The study, commissioned by the Accident Rehabilitation and Compensation Insurance Corporation, was co-authored by Dr Arroll and Dr Felicity Goodyear-Smith from The University of Auckland and was published in the British Medical Journal.

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Scientists have reported the first discovery of the female sex hormone, progesterone, in a plant. This finding is considered by many as an overturn from conventional wisdom.

The discovery was reported in the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Natural Products, a monthly publication.

From News-Medical.Net:

“The significance of the unequivocal identification of progesterone cannot be overstated,” the article by Guido F. Pauli and colleagues, states. “While the biological role of progesterone has been extensively studied in mammals, the reason for its presence in plants is less apparent.” They speculate that the hormone, like other steroid hormones, might be an ancient bioregulator that evolved billions of years ago, before the appearance of modern plants and animals. The new discovery may change scientific understanding of the evolution and function of progesterone in living things.

Scientists previously identified progesterone-like substances in plants and speculated that the hormone itself could exist in plants. But researchers had not found the actual hormone in plants until now. Pauli and colleagues used two powerful laboratory techniques, nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectroscopy, to detect progesterone in leaves of the Common Walnut, or English Walnut, tree. They also identified five new progesterone-related steroids in a plant belonging to the buttercup family.

The involved researchers made use of two powerful laboratory techniques, nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectroscopy, for detecting progesterone in leaves of the Common Walnut, or English walnut, tree.

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David Ortiz recently remarked that he was a frustrated soul after a numbing loss, hitless game, and another day filled with questions about steroids.

Ortiz said that he has been greatly distracted by the steroid circumstances enveloping him.

From NYTimes.com:

In Ortiz’s brief exchange with reporters Thursday, he was not too comfortable. He typically stands by his locker and jokes with reporters. But when reporters descended upon him, he remained seated and kept his back to them. Then he used the Soulja Boy song as his version of a bouncer.

Other than that, he tried hard to be the normally bubbly Big Papi. He posed for pictures in the dugout, he signed autographs behind the plate and he teased teammates.

Still, as beloved as Ortiz has been in helping the Red Sox win World Series titles in 2004 and 2007, his legacy changed once it was reported that he was on the list of players who had tested positive. When Major League Baseball began testing for steroids in 2003, the list of those who failed the tests that year was supposed to remain anonymous. But the results were never destroyed.

The court-sealed results are now the subject of litigation between the government and the union. Whatever may be the result, the spirit of baseball has been once again torn by its “once considered greatest sons”.

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The overall survival rate of patients suffering from a cancer of the plasma cells in the bone marrow, multiple myeloma, could be improved considerably with steroid pill treatment.

The use of Prednisone in response to an upfront chemotherapy can be easily described as a safe option to prolong lives of multiple myeloma patients, according to James Berenson, M.D., lead author of the Southwest Oncology Group sponsored study and Director of the Multiple Myeloma and Bone Metastasis Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

From News.Bio-Medicine.Org:

Multiple myeloma occurs when the body makes an abnormally high number of cancerous plasma cells. When healthy, plasma cells help to protect the body from infection and disease by forming antibodies that attack foreign substances. But when the body makes too many plasma cells that all make the same type of antibody, this leads to multiple myeloma, causing damage to bones, severe bone pain, an overabundance of calcium in the blood, anemia, and a weakening of the immune system. Today, most patients with multiple myeloma receive initial treatment with chemotherapy or with high-dose chemotherapy followed by a stem cell transplant and many respond to treatment and achieve remission. However, all patients ultimately relapse with incurable disease, leading physicians to search for ways to prolong remission for as long as possible by using some type of maintenance therapy.

Remission can be better controlled and prolonging lives become easy tasks when oral prednisone is administered in the long-term after chemotherapy treatment, as per the researchers.

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Walter Wahli and colleagues at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, have been able to identify a new mechanism that underlies the differential expression of proteins in male and female mice.

The difference is in relation to expression of liver proteins controlling a large number of whole-body processes such as energy generation and steroid hormone production.

From Sciencedaily.com:

The protein PPAR-alpha is able to enter the nucleus, where it acts to control the expression of a large number of genes. In the study, PPAR-alpha was found to repress the expression of many liver genes responsible for making proteins involved in immunity and steroid production and turnover only in female mice. One of the genes most strongly repressed in female mice by PPAR-alpha was Cyp7b1, which generates a protein involved in drug breakdown and the generation of cholesterol, steroids, and other fats. Detailed analysis revealed the mechanism by which PPAR-alpha repressed Cyp7b1 expression, it was modified by a process known as sumoylation.

Importantly, this only occurred in female mice. As PPAR-alpha–mediated repression protected female mice from estrogen-induced intrahepatic cholestasis, the most common liver disease during pregnancy, the authors suggest that PPAR-alpha agonists might provide a new approach to prevent this disease.

The research appeared in the Sept. 1, 2009 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

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According to a research that featured in an issue of the Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology (JACI), the majority of asthma hospitalizations may be because asthmatic people do not take their inhaled steroid medications on time.

The JACI is the peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI).

From News-Medical.Net:

L. Keoki Williams, MD, MPH, and colleagues from the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, and the Medical College of Georgia are the first to study the relationship between medication adherence and asthma related outcomes in adult patients with asthma. They examined the records of 405 asthma patients ages 18-50 to determine if poor adherence to directions for taking inhaled steroids resulted in poor asthma-outcomes. Researchers analyzed outpatient visits, emergency department visits, hospitalizations and oral steroid use.

The study found:

* Overall adherence to inhaled steroids was approximately 50%.

* Patients who missed one out of four doses of their prescribed inhaled

* steroid doubled their risk of being hospitalized.

* 60% of hospitalizations could have been prevented had patients taken

* Their inhaled medication as directed.

* Poor medication adherence was also associated with emergency

* Department visits and the need to use oral steroid medications, which

* Are associated with more severe asthma.

Inhaled steroids have become the standard form of treatment for persistent asthma and considerably improve asthma symptoms besides reducing the concerned complications.

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A two-year ban has been imposed on Luke Troy, the Australian club rugby prop, for ordering two different types of steroid drugs (21 packets of testosterone-1 a mixture of Androstenes in February 2006 and 100 capsules of DHEA 200 containing 200 mg dehydropepiandrosterone per capsule in August 2006).

The Australian Rugby Union initially cleared the Newcastle Waratahs club prop as he had not collected the drugs from the customs and no evidence was found to suggest if the intercepted drugs were actually what the packaging said they were.

From Brisbanetimes.com.au:

Troy had told ASADA: ”I acknowledge that I may have been naive to order [over the internet] but did so in good faith with no intention of using any prohibited substance. However at no time did I have possession of such items due to them being seized by Australian Customs.”

However the International Rugby Board appealed against the decision of the ARU and asked the Court of Arbitration for Sport to decide the matter.

This week the CAS ruled Troy had committed an anti-doping violation by using or attempting to use a prohibited substance. The CAS found that Troy had searched the internet for products, deliberately ordered products believing they contained testosterone and DHEA and that he intended to use those substances personally for ”recovery and meal replacement”.

The CAS said it was not essential that the substances were in fact proven to be prohibited substances.

Troy was banned from playing sports till May 5, 2011 after a lengthy appeal process.

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Disease activity related with multiple sclerosis (MS) is reduced to a considerable extent when a combination of steroid drugs and MS drug is administered to patients, as per a study presented as a part of the Late-breaking Science Program at the American Academy of Neurology’s 61st Annual Meeting in Seattle.

From Sciencedaily.com:

For the study, people with MS received the steroid drug methylprednisolone in monthly “pulses,” or three doses over three days, in addition to regular weekly treatment with the drug interferon beta-1a. The steroid drug has typically been used only to treat acute MS attacks, not as an ongoing treatment.

The study involved 341 people with relapsing-remitting MS. Half of the participants received both drugs; half received only the interferon drug plus a placebo. The participants were seen every three months during the three-year study for evaluation.

The participants had the disease for an average of three years and had not yet received a disease-modifying drug such as interferon.

Those who received both drugs had 38 percent fewer relapses, or times when the disease is active, than those receiving only the interferon drug. They also improved slightly on a test of MS disability, while the scores for the placebo group decreased slightly.

Study author Mads Ravnborg, MD, of the Danish Multiple Sclerosis Research Center at Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark, said that the study noted that both the drugs seem to have a synergy when taken together for providing improved beneficial effect on the disease activity as against use of the MS drug in isolation.

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