The discovery will also open up new doors for improved therapeutic interventions.

From News-Medical.net:

Researchers used blood samples collected between 2001 and 2005 from 77 children - 53 hospitalized at Children’s Medical Center Dallas with invasive S aureus infections and 24 controls. The control samples were collected from healthy children attending either well-child clinic or undergoing elective surgical procedures. Children with underlying chronic diseases, immunodeficiency, multiple infections, and those who received steroids or other immunomodulatory therapies were excluded from the study.

The children ranged in age from a few months to 15 years and included 43 boys and 34 girls. Those with S aureus infections - both methicillin-resistant (MRSA) and methicillin-susceptible (MSSA) - were matched with healthy controls for age, sex and race. The researchers also characterized the extent as well as the type of infection in each patient to make sure that the strain of bacteria didn’t influence the results.

Dr. Ardura stressed that more research is needed because the results represent a one-time snapshot of what’s going on in the cell during an invasive staphylococcal infection.

Dr. Monica Ardura, instructor of pediatrics at UT Southwestern and lead author of the study available online in PLoS One, the Public Library of Science’s online journal, said that preliminary account of a response pattern provided within the immune system was found to be very consistent, very reproducible, and very intense.

This finding was revealed by researchers led by specialists at the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute.

Proliferative diabetic retinopathy is a complication of diabetes that often leads to blindness.

From News-Medical.Net:

Proliferative diabetic retinopathy is marked by the growth of new and unwanted blood vessels on the optic nerve in the back of the eye (which communicates information from the retina to the brain) or another area of the retina, the light-sensitive part of the eye. Despite advances in treating both diabetes and its complications, about 700,000 Americans have proliferative diabetic retinopathy and 63,000 new cases develop each year.

In the study, each patient’s eyes were randomly assigned to receive either a laser treatment (photocoagulation) for diabetic macular edema or an injection (1 or 4 milligrams) of triamcinolone acetonide directly into the eye as often as every four months.

According to Bressler, lead author of the study, there was some evidence that steroids could improve vision outcomes from diabetic macular edema (DME), swelling of the center of the retina, the part of the retina used for reading or driving. Study results showed that steroids were not superior to laser treatments for DME.

Neil M. Bressler, the James P. Gills Professor of Ophthalmology and chief of the Retina Division of the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute, chair of the government-sponsored Diabetic Retinopathy Clinical Research Network, remarked that this complication can be effectively and safely treated with lasers.

Scientists at the UT Southwestern Medical Center have noted that a combination of traditional antimicrobial therapy and corticosteroids is an effective option for facilitating faster recovery from disease in Pneumonia patients than with antibiotics alone.

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.

Antibiotics and steroids form a synergy together. While the bug is killed by antibiotics, steroids treat lung inflammation, as per Dr. Robert Hardy, associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics and the study’s senior author.

The findings of this study were presented on June 12 at PReS 2009, a joint congress with the 2009 Congress of the European League against Rheumatism (EULAR) in Copenhagen, Denmark.

From Sciencedaily.com:

Researchers in this study recruited ten children with newly-diagnosed SoJIA, initiating treatment with anakinra prior to steroids. During a six month follow-up period, absolute NK cell numbers and function, cytokine profiles, and NK cell response after IL-18 stimulation, were monitored.

Following treatment, clinical parameters such as fever, exanthema and arthritis resolved after 3 days. A rapid decrease in ESR (erythrocyte sediment rate; an indication of inflammation), CRP (C reactive protein; a marker for inflammation), ferritin (a test of iron stores in the body) and sIL-2R (soluble interleukin 2 receptor) was observed. No differences of IL-1alpha, IL-1beta and IL-33 were observed, but levels of IL-6, IL-1RA and IL-18 returned to normal, as observed in healthy controls. During follow-up, two patients flared following anakinra treatment.

Dr Wilco de Jager of the University Medical Centre Utrecht, The Netherlands, who led the study, remarked that the results of this study suggest a potential new treatment strategy for children with newly-diagnosed SoJIA and this kind of an option is effective to restore the deficient IL-18 response of natural killer (NK) cells.

Benjamin D. Levine, M.D., director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine at Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas, was the senior author of this study.

From News-Medical.Net:

“Perhaps by remaining fit, the players were able to prevent the progression of pre-diabetes from becoming real diabetes,” said Benjamin D. Levine, M.D., senior author of the study and director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine at Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas. “The prevalence of obesity, using normal criteria, is really high when you look at NFL players.

“But the BMI is only a crude measure of fatness. For the athletic community it may be biased against very dense, muscular people who may have a high BMI but not as much fat. The BMI might not tell the whole story.”

This study was based on retired players from another era. The football players today are about 50 percent larger than they were a quarter of a century ago, said Levine, who is also professor of internal medicine in the Division of Cardiology at UT Southwestern. “Today, there is a lot of incentive for football players to get as big as possible through eating, extensive training or by using anabolic steroids and growth hormones. The criterion for success is that bigger is better.”

Whether current or recently retired players are at greater risk for cardiovascular events or death merits further study, given the larger body sizes of today’s NFL player, he said.

It was noted that a reduced prevalence of diabetes, metabolic syndrome, sedentary lifestyle, and hypertension was noticed in retired National Football League (NFL) players when compared to other men.

This drug also holds the potential of regenerating a portion of cartilage lost because of osteoarthritis.

The findings were reported at the annual meeting of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research in Denver.

From Sciencedaily.com:

Cartilage can become damaged by many kinds of injury and by mechanical stresses that come with age. Over time, damaged cartilage deteriorates to cause osteoarthritis (OA), with its attendant joint inflammation and pain. Currently available drugs like steroids or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents (e.g. Advil, Aleve) reduce pain but do not address the loss of cartilage behind the osteoarthritis, which is projected to afflict more than 50 million Americans by 2020.

Cartilage forms the sponge-like, shock-absorbing layers that keep the impact of running and jumping and lifting from grinding bones against each other in joints. The cell type at the heart of osteoarthritis is the chondrocyte, the cartilage-producing cell responsible for maintaining the integrity of joint cartilage.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and conducted by Randy Rosier, M.D., Ph.D., professor within the Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation at the University of Rochester Medical Center in collaboration with Erik Sampson, Todd O’Brien, Di Chen, Susan Bukata, J. Edward Puzas, Regis O’Keefe and Michael Zuscik within the Department of Orthopaedics and by Hani Awad in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Dr. Raanan Shamir of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine and Schneider Children’s Medical Centre remarked that a nutritional formula based on the lines of diet of astronauts may prove effective for facilitating remission in young patients, very much on the lines of steroid-based drugs but without steroid side effects.

From Sciencedaily.com:

A similar concept works wonders for children suffering from IBD. “Prepared powder, with liquids, gives you all the nutritional requirements you need for the day,” Dr. Shamir explains. “We don’t know why these formulas work, and nobody has shown that any one formula is preferable to another. People have to be committed and eat nothing else during the period of time they are on nutrition therapy, and it is difficult to do — but if they do it, they go into remission.”

To induce remission, children need to be on nutrition therapy for 6-8 weeks. And in order to maintain remission, 25-50% of their caloric intake must be supplied by nutrition therapy, sometimes for years. This is why children experiencing the treatment need the support of physicians, dieticians, psychologists, and of course their families.

Dr. Shamir’s quest to educate the international medical community about the benefits of nutrition therapy has been an uphill battle. “The acceptance of this is difficult,” he says. “You have to persuade the family. Not all physicians know it works, and it’s much easier to give someone a prescription than try to work with the child.”

The finding was reported by Dr. Shamir in the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition.

Rick Dutrow, the trainer in question, was suspended after his horse positive for a breathing stimulant in May 2008 after a race at the Churchill Downs.

From Timesunion.com:

Rick Dutrow’s horse, Salute the Count, tested positive for a breathing stimulant in May 2008 after another race at Churchill Downs. He was first suspended in July but appealed, leading to Tuesday’s settlement.

The suspension runs from Nov. 15 to Dec. 15 as part of the settlement. Dutrow will not have to pay the commission’s legal fees.

It was admitted by Dutrow that his horse had the then-legal steroid Stanozolol in his bloodstream during his 2008 Derby and Preakness victories.

Many states in the United States, including Kentucky, immediately banned Stanozolol and other anabolic steroids ever since this incident was first reported.ax

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, noted that Prednisone use in a reaction to an upfront chemotherapy could be classified as a safe option for prolonging lives.

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.

Lives can be prolonged and remission can be effectively managed when oral prednisone is administered in the long-term after chemotherapy treatment, as per the researchers.

A team led by Henry J. Lee who has spearheaded antedrug research in anti-inflammatory, anti-AIDS and anti-cancer drugs for nearly 30 years, has been able to find drugs without adverse side effects.

The drugs, called as antedrugs, have been developed by the research team 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.

The study was entitled as Anti-Inflammatory Activities of New Steroidal Antedrugs Isoxazoline Derivatives and 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.