Steroids Blog

David Ortiz recently remarked that he became a frustrated soul after a hitless game, numbing loss, and one more day full with questions on steroids.

Ortiz also remarked that steroid circumstances enveloping him are distracting him to the limits.

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 presently the litigation subject between the union and the government. The spirit of baseball has once again been shown in bad light by reports like this.

If steroids are withdrawn at early stage post liver transplantation, a reduced tolerance and higher rejection incidences to glucose may be considered to necessitate diabetes treatment.

The finding was suggested after the first double-blind placebo-controlled study was conducted to examine the early steroid withdrawal effects. This study was published in an issue of Liver Transplantation, the official journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) and the International Liver Transplantation Society (ILTS).

From News-Medical.Net:

“Although the incidence of acute rejection in the placebo group was increased, it was easily controlled in most of the cases and did not affect long-term graft histology or survival,” the authors note, adding that the increase may ultimately be acceptable if steroids could be eliminated. However, the main goal of steroid elimination is to reduce metabolic complications and this study showed no difference in cholesterol or hypertension, with a trend toward a decreased incidence of diabetes in the placebo group.

The authors conclude: “Indeed, while there are many arguments in favor of corticosteroid withdrawal beyond 3 months posttransplantation, in terms of safety and efficacy, our study demonstrates that earlier withdrawal at day 14 is not completely safe in terms of rejection, but seems efficient in terms of improvement of glucose tolerability,” which could decrease long-term mortality due to cardiovascular disease.

The study is expected to help members of the medical fraternity to handle complicated issues with a greater sense of caution.

The use of steroid medications cannot be termed as effective for preventing hospitalization or improving symptoms of respiration for treating bronchitis, which is a common viral lower respiratory infection among infants.

This finding was revealed in a study published in the July 26 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. These findings by the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) are believed to offer guidance for curing one of the most common causes of infant hospitalization.

From News-Medical.Net:

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. Bronchiolitis is most common during the winter months.

“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.”

Nathan Kuppermann, M.D., a professor of emergency medicine and pediatrics at the University of California, Davis, chair of the PECARN network’s steering committee, and the senior investigator of the study, remarked that this study suggests that the power of a research network as big as PECARN to resolve difficult-to-answer questions.

The latest interventional radiology treatment is effective for bone marrow complications while the presently followed treatment therapy for treating graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) after bone marrow or cord blood transplant not fails in context to mortality but is also ineffective.

Joshua L. Weintraub, M.D., chief of the Division of Vascular and Interventional Radiology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, said that interventional radiology treatment is a life-saving treatment methodology for people with steroid-resistant GVHD.

From News-Medical.Net:

GVHD is a common complication of an allogeneic bone marrow transplant (one using blood-forming cells donated by a family member or unrelated donor) or cord blood transplant. With GVHD, the immune cells from the donated marrow or cord blood (the graft) attack the body of the transplant patient (the host). GVHD, which can be mild to life-threatening, can affect many different parts of the body, particularly the skin, liver and intestines. In this study the affected organs were the liver and small and large bowels.

Studies from the 1990s show that steroid resistance is common—80 percent of people fail to have a sustained, complete response rate or only have a partial response, which means the immune cells are still attacking the organ to varying degrees. “Until now, there has been no good therapy for steroid-resistant patients with GVHD. This small study—the first of its kind in the United States—shows a new, viable option; however, larger studies with longer follow-up results are needed,” added Weintraub.

According to Weintraub, the interventional radiology treatment does not display any immediate procedure or drug-related complications besides being a safe and effective one for fighting against GVHD.

Patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) at all stages of the disease can benefit from cataract surgery, as per a published study in this month’s Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (Academy).

It was revealed in the study that the steroid triamcinolone can prove very effective to treat diabetic macular edema (DME) patients when standard treatment options have failed to live up to the expectations.

From News-Medical.Net:

Cataract surgery improved vision in patients with any stage-from mild to advanced- AMD in the first study to include an adequate number of advanced AMD patients. Data was obtained from the multicenter, prospective Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS), funded by the National Eye Institute (NEI), which was organized primarily to evaluate the effects of high-dose vitamin and mineral supplements on cataract and AMD. As the American population ages AMD prevalence is expected to rise, and many patients will concurrently develop cataract; both diseases can cause blindness if untreated.

“Earlier epidemiology had suggested cataract surgery might worsen AMD, so the data from the AREDS cohort study were evaluated to answer this important question,” said Emily Y. Chew, MD, who led the study for NEI.

Mark Gillies, PhD, lead researchers, remarked that IVTA (intravitreal triamcinolone) treatment can be considered by doctors while selecting advanced DME patients when standard treatment options have failed to deliver the expected results.

With the “waves of steroids” touching the borders of every country, South Africa was not an exception. The beautiful country is slowly but steadily showing signs of being grappled with steroids as more and more steroid cases are now being reported from it.

Every one knows that steroids have been in the worlds of professional sports and bodybuilding for a long period of time but South Africa and Steroids never seem to have a bonding, but not any more.

From SteroidTimes.Com:

So let me start by dispelling a popular myth or rumour that i often get asked about:  STEROIDS ARE NOT LEGAL IN SOUTH AFRICA! That said, steroid are not a highly policed area in the drug market, any ‘busts’ or the like generally come from bodybuilders or dealers that are involved in manufacturing or importing other illicit drugs such as cocaine, exstacy, khat or crystal meth. The reality is that there are just not enough resources in South Africa to control such a small segment of the drug trade, they have bigger fish to fry.

We have a range of anabolic products from black market to legitimate available to the athlete or bodybuilder. Many pharmacies are quite happy to sell drugs such a steroids, growth hormone, thyroid hormones and insulin ‘under the counter’ as long as cash is paid, the better you know the pharmacist, the better price you get. Those products that are not available from a pharmacy can be obtained relatively easily from your entrepreneurial gym dealer who will generally have at his disposal a range of imported or local underground brands.

The growing success of steroids has clearly suggested that all measures for inhibiting the promotion of steroids have landed up in a mess, with no result.

Luke Troy, the Australian club rugby prop, is in the limelight this time for wrong reasons due to the circumstances surrounding a steroid-related two-year ban.

It is worth noting here that the Newcastle Waratahs club prop ordered two separate 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).

Though he was initially cleared by the Australian Rugby Union as he did not collected the drugs from the Australian Customs and it was not proven that the intercepted drug products were the same what the packaging was addressing, he has now been slapped with a 2-year ban.

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.

After the end of a lengthy appeal process, Troy was banned until May 5, 2011 from playing sports. It is considered by some sources that this test case will prove to be critical for other sports drugs tribunal hearings that involve non-analytical evidence.

Coating DNA with a topical steroid can prove itself to be an effective option when it comes to the formulation of therapeutic gene delivery, as per bioengineers at the University of Pennsylvania.

It was remarked by the involved team that a common anti-inflammatory steroid, when wrapped around a DNA strand, can prove its worth for prevention of immune responses that are associated with techniques of gene transfer.

Scott Diamond, Senior Author and Professor of bioengineering at Pennsylvania and Associate Director of Penn’s Institute for Medicine and Engineering, said that steroid coating not only prove worthy for allowing genes to be taken up into a cell but also facilitate prevention of anti-inflammatory response that is visible in gene transfer therapy.

From Eurekalert.org:

Currently there are two basic approaches to delivering therapeutic genes: nonviral and viral. Injecting a subject with pure DNA is possible, but a DNA molecule, by itself, has inherent trouble in entering cells. Viral carriers can serve as delivery vehicles for DNA, literally infecting cells with new genes. Both methods, however, are associated with the creation of inflammatory immune responses that reduces the action of the therapeutic gene.

DNA is a large and negatively charged molecule, which is the source of the stumbling point in getting cells to take up DNA. To counter the negative charge of DNA, Diamond and his colleagues took a common steroid, dexamethasone, and made it “sticky” by adding a nitrogen-rich, postively charged tail. This tail provides the glue that attaches the steroid to the naked DNA.

“The steroid is a fatty lipid so, in essense, we have greased up DNA for cellular uptake,” Diamond said, “plus the cells get a big dose of steroid.”

According to Diamond, the chemistry involved in manufacturing this new steroid vehicle is a fairly straightforward, one-step process that is simple compared to creating viral gene-therapy vectors. “But this is more than just ‘gene therapy on steroids,’” Diamond said. “The dexmethasone not only eased inflammation in an animal model, but, as our study showed, actually allowed the cells to use the foreign DNA more effectively.”

It was also remarked by Diamond that steroid coating can be useful in enhancing the chances of successful gene transfer in humans.

Capsaicin, which is commonly known to the world as the pepper component used in turning up heat in jalapeqos, has one more function than just burning the tongue. It can also prove effective to drive and kill prostate cancer cells as per studies published in an issue of Cancer Research.

It was found out during the study that Capsaicin has an ability to cause the prostate carcinoma cells to undergo programmed cell death or apoptosis. The study was conduced by a team of researchers from the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in collaboration with colleagues from UCLA.

From News-Medical.Net:

Capsaicin induced approximately 80 percent of prostate cancer cells growing in mice to follow the molecular pathways leading to apoptosis. Prostate cancer tumors treated with capsaicin were about one-fifth the size of tumors in non-treated mice.

“Capsaicin had a profound anti-proliferative effect on human prostate cancer cells in culture,” said Svren Lehmann, M.D., Ph.D., visiting scientist at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the UCLA School of Medicine. “It also dramatically slowed the development of prostate tumors formed by those human cell lines grown in mouse models.”

Lehmann estimated that the dose of pepper extract fed orally to the mice was equivalent to giving 400 milligrams of capsaicin three times a week to a 200 pound man, roughly equivalent to between three and eight fresh habaqera peppers - depending on the pepper’s capsaicin content. Habaqeras are the highest rated pepper for capsaicin content according to the Scoville heat index. Habaqero peppers, which are native to the Yucatan, typically contain up to 300,000 Scoville units. The more popular Jalapeqo variety from Oaxaca, Mexico, and the southwest United States, contains 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units.

It was also found out during the study that Capsaicin helps in the inhibition of the NF-kappa Beta that is a molecular mechanism participating in the pathways leading to apoptosis in many cell types. The study also revealed that the pepper component can also prove to be effective in curbing the growth of prostate cancer by regulation of androgen receptors that are steroid activated proteins for controlling the expression of certain growth relating genes.

Present steroid (testosterone) doping tests in international sports must be scrapped at they are ignoring variations in hormonal activities, as per a research published ahead of print in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

It is regarded that testosterone and various other hormones propelling the levels of testosterone in the human body such as growth hormone are some of the most commonly abused performance enhancing drugs in sport.

From News-Medical.Net:

They included 57 men of Black African origin; 32 of Asian origin; 32 of Hispanic origin; and 50 of white (Caucasian) origin in their research. All the men were aged between 18 and 36.

The results revealed the genetic variation in almost one in four (22%) of the African footballers; in eight out 10 (81%) of the Asian players; one in 10 of the white men, and in 7% of the Hispanic players.

Based on these findings, the Swiss researchers “recalibrated” the thresholds for each ethnic group.

The new T:E ratios were: 5.6 for men of African origin; 5.7 for white men, and 5.8 for men of Hispanic origin. For men of Asian origin, the ratio was 3.8.

A single indiscriminate threshold to pick up steroid abuse in international sport is “not fit for purpose,” the authors conclude. Instead, the reference ranges should be tailored to an athlete’s individual endocrinological (hormonal) passport, they suggest.

“[Such a] passport may detect modifications induced by abuse of testosterone and its precursors, but also alterations in the steroid profile caused by indirect androgen doping products,” they conclude.

The study comprised of tests that were conducted on steroid profiles of many football players from different ethnicities after steroids were deliberately added to their urine samples.