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According to a finding that will be disclosed by a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN), treatment with steroids can delay or prevent loss of kidney function in individuals with IgA nephropathy, a type of kidney disease.

The list of study co-authors included Simeone Andrulli, Lucia Del Vecchio, Francesco Locatelli (Ospedale di Lecco), Antonello Pani (Ospedale di Cagliari), Patrizia Scaini (Ospedale di Brescia), Giambattista Fogazzi (Ospedale Maggiore di Milano), Bruno Vogt (Inselspital di Berna), Vincenzo De Cristofaro (Ospedale di Sondrio), Landino Allegri (Ospedale di Parma), Lino Cirami (Ospedale di Firenze), and Aldo Deni Procaccini (Ospedale di Foggia).

From Sciencedaily.com:

“Our study shows that corticosteroids are very useful in patients with IgA nephropathy, and that the addition of an immunosuppressant drug, such as azathioprine, doesn’t increase their benefit,” comments Claudio Pozzi, MD (Ospedale E. Bassini, Milan).

Patients with IgA nephropathy develop deposits of the protein IgA in the kidneys. The abnormal IgA deposits damage the glomeruli (the filtering units of the kidney), leading to blood and protein in the urine. Previous studies have shown that steroids can reduce urine protein levels and help protect kidney function. However, some patients develop progressive kidney disease, despite steroid treatment.

The kidney complication is an autoimmune disease affecting the kidneys and is considered to be a a major cause of end-stage failure of the kidneys in younger people.

There is an urgent need for rethinking how addiction agencies and doctors support minority groups as per a Home Office-funded report. This call was made after it was found that gay men and lesbians are far more likely to put their health at risk from drug misuse than the heterosexuals.

Health officials were suggested to try new approaches of prevention like use of use of social networking sites for changing drug-use behavior among lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-sexual (LGBT) groups.

From Guardian.co.uk:

The study, led by Professor Haleh Afshar, who is a member of the commission and a crossbench peer, finds:

■ Illicit drug use among LGBT groups is higher than among their heterosexual counterparts

■ LGBT people may also be at risk of misusing other drugs, such as steroids.

■ Use of some types of drugs may be associated with risky behaviour, including exposure to HIV infection.

The report quotes findings from the British Crime Survey which estimate that 10% of heterosexuals took drugs last year, compared with 33% of gay or bisexual people. Explanations vary as to why these groups appear to be heavier drug users than heterosexuals. Tris Reid-Smith, editor-in-chief of the Pink Paper, which is working with the Home Office to publicise the report’s findings, said: “Nobody can know and we’re just guessing. Relatively little research has been done on this subject.”Reid-Smith acknowledged that gay people are often “neophiliacs”. “We tend to be early adopters of technology; maybe we are early adopters of other things too,” he said.

The report by the UK Drug Policy Commission claimed drug services are of modest relevance to many in lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-sexual (LGBT) groups.

Muscle mass and body strength can be possible benefits of performance enhancing or bodybuilding steroids used by athletes but this can lead to kidney function damage. The finding was revealed by a presented paper at the American Society of Nephrology’s 42nd Annual Meeting and Scientific Exposition in San Diego, CA.

In today’s times, more and more athletes are abusing anabolic steroids are to deliver dramatic performances and attain muscle mass.

From Sciencedaily.com:

When the bodybuilders discontinued steroid use their kidney abnormalities improved, with the exception of one individual with advanced kidney disease who developed end-stage kidney failure and required dialysis. Also, one of the bodybuilders started taking steroids again and suffered a relapse of severe kidney dysfunction.

The researchers propose that extreme increases in muscle mass require the kidneys to increase their filtration rate, placing harmful levels of stress on these organs. It’s also likely that steroids have direct toxic effects on the kidneys. “Athletes who use anabolic steroids and the doctors caring for them need to be aware of the potentially serious risks to the kidney,” said Dr. Herlitz.

This study was conducted in the laboratory of Dr. Vivette D’Agati, MD at Columbia Univeristy Medical Center. Study co-authors include Glen Markowitz, MD, Joshua Schwimmer, MD, Michael Stokes, MD, Cheryl Kunis, MD, Vivette D’Agati, MD, (Columbia University Medical Center); Alton Farris, MD, and Robert Colvin, MD (Massachusetts General Hospital).

The findings suggested that long-term and habitual use of steroids could have serious effects on the kidneys.

According to a study led by Mayo Clinic, the combination of biologic therapy with immune-suppressing drugs as against use of immune-suppressing drugs alone could be more than useful to suggest remission from Crohn’s disease in an improved manner.

It was remarked by William Sandborn, M.D., gastroenterologist and vice chair of the Division of Gastroenterology & Hepatology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester that study results are good enough to change clinical practice.

From Sciencedaily.com:

Researchers found that 57 percent of patients who received combination therapy with infliximab and azathioprine achieved steroid-free remission after 26 weeks. This is compared to 44 percent of patients who achieved remission with infliximab monotherapy and 30 percent with azathioprine alone. Both the infliximab combination therapy and infliximab monotherapy groups were statistically superior to the azathioprine group. These results were durable through week 50 and overall results show comparable safety in the three groups.

Historically, patients with Crohn’s disease have been treated sequentially with steroids, then azathioprine, then monoclonal antibodies such as infliximab. The study definitively demonstrates that infliximab-based strategies are more effective than azathioprine, explains Dr. Sandborn.

“Results of this study will provide doctors and their patients with more information on how to use these drugs most appropriately to most effectively treat Crohn’s disease,” says Dr. Sandborn. “For the first time, we have longer term outcome data on the advantages of combination therapy that will help guide our treatment of patients with Crohn’s disease.”

The study appeared in the April 15, 2010 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The about-to-come 600th home run by Alex Rodriguez, popularly known as A-Rod, will not be devalued by his admission about use of steroids in the past according to some baseball fans and sluggers.

Rodriguez’s image is not tarnished like a Barry Bonds, as per Arlan Ettinger, President of Guernsey’s auction house.

Brandon Steiner, head of Steiner Sports Memorabilia, predicted A-Rod’s historic blast, said that the new mark by A-Rod will carry a similar price to his 500th: $103,579.

From NYdailynews.com:

“My feeling is this one will be about the same,” said Steiner. “When it comes to these record breakers, people tend to move toward these items.”

A-Rod enters tonight’s game against the Angels with 598 homers. Steiner said he didn’t see the price for the historic homer going much higher than No. 500.

“Things have changed a little bit since the last one,” Steiner said. “Assume the economy - and other factors.”

A-Rod would become only the seventh player to hit 600 homers, albeit as a charter member of baseball’s steroid generation.

He insists he’s been clean since 2003, and Ettinger said most people are beyond linking Rodriguez with steroids.

A-Rod will become only the 7th player in history of the game to reach the mark of 600 home runs though some baseball lovers consider him as a charter member of steroid generation of the game.

A Staten Island doctor who was charged for peddling anabolic steroids to NYPD cops and bodybuilders walked out of the court as a free man. Richard Lucente was made free to go after his lawyer gloated over the no-jail deal.

Lucente was facing charges that could have put him in dozen of years in prison after he pleaded guilty for getting kickbacks from a Brooklyn pharmacy to feed its patients.

From NYdailynews.com:

The sentencing marked the end of a wide-ranging, highly publicized steroid probe that ended with no one going to prison.

“I want to apologize to my friends, my family and my patients,” Lucente said.

Lucente had admitted to one count of conspiracy for taking kickbacks from Lowen’s Pharmacy in Bay Ridge, which also was charged in the case initially.

The charges against the pharmacy were dropped, but its owner, John Rossi, 56, committed suicide in 2007 during the investigation.

John Meringolo, Richard Lucente’s lawyer, boasted after his client was sentenced in Brooklyn Supreme Court that they did not even get 30 minutes while they wanted 30 years.

According to a finding disclosed by a research published in the journal Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, a new technique for preventing incidents of doping in sports has been identified.

This technique was developed by scientists from Imperial College London and the University of Nottingham and can help anti-doping officials ascertain cheating in sports.

From News-Medical.Net:

The new approach, developed by scientists from Imperial College London and the University of Nottingham, allows easy analysis of the carbon ratio. It uses a catalytic reaction to strip steroids of their more aggressive parts whilst leaving the carbon ’skeleton’ intact. This technique, called hydropyrolysis, is commonly used to aid oil exploration by freeing small fragments of organic matter from petroleum rock sources.

Dr Mark Sephton, from Imperial’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering and lead author of the research, explained: “The type of carbon in the body’s molecules reflects the carbon ingested as part of an athlete’s diet, and if you can work out the carbon ratio in the molecules you can determine the source of the carbon.

“Drug cheats should beware. The carbon-based secrets of steroids are now apparent to the analyst. Thanks to our technique, in the future it will be much more difficult to escape detection when using performance-enhancing steroids“, he added.

It is believed that this technique has the potential to ascertain the presence of natural as well as synthetic steroids in the body.

A pepper ingredient used for turning up heat in jalapeqos, Capsaicin, can drive and kill prostate cancer cells as per a study appearing in an issue of Cancer Research.

This pepper ingredient has the ability of programming death of cells or apoptosis of the prostate cancer cells, according to 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.

The molecular mechanism participating in pathways (NF-kappa Beta) leading to death of different cells and cancer cell progression through regulation of androgen receptors that are steroid activated proteins controlling expression of certain growth related genes are preventable with Capsaicin.

More and more women are entering the world of professional bodybuilding and the numbers of supporters are on a high like never-before even though bodybuilding for women is not a big sport in Australia.

It is worth noting here that physical appearance may not be everything but it does count a lot in body building. This is one of the reasons why more and more women are visiting the gyms and some of them are even making use of anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs to stay ahead of the rest.

From Adelaidenow.com.au:

When Vicki Sauerwald reached her late 30s she realised she was no longer the skinny girl of a decade before. “Eating finally caught up with me,” she says. “So I joined a gym to lose weight.” Sauerwald started weight training and doing the occasional aerobic class. “I also started developing muscle,” she says. “Friends started noticing my physique changing. Before that I had never even contemplated being a figure competitor as I was rather naive and thought that all body builders used anabolic steroids, and that was something I wasn’t going to do.”

It was only a matter of months before her first competition in 2007 that she started thinking more seriously about weight training. By the end of that year, Sauerwald had won first place Figure Novice Australian Champion with the INBA.

She’s stepping on stage again over the next few weekends, and it’s a tough preparation. Sauerwald’s exercise regime isn’t over the top. She does half an hour walking in the morning and an hour or so in the gym six days a week, lifting weights and maybe adding some extra cardio exercises. It’s the diet that sounds hardest. “It’s the most important part,” she says. “If I eat the wrong things I’m not going to get lean enough, no matter what I do.”

Anabolic steroids, when used under medical supervision, can be more than just useful for staying close to name, fame, and recognition.

The combination of steroids and antibiotics is better than the use of antibiotics alone for providing relief to patients suffering from pneumonia, according to a team of researchers from the UT Southwestern Medical Center.

This study disclosed that the combination can prove its worth by restoring health of patients with pneumonia.

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, remarked that clinical trials will soon be conducted to confirm these findings.