Steroids can effectively treat Pneumonia patients
by admin ~ February 4th, 2010.
A combination of steroids and antibiotics is a better option than antibiotics alone for patients suffering from pneumonia, as per scientists from the UT Southwestern Medical Center.
It was noted in a study available online that mice infected with a type of severe bacterial pneumonia and treated with a combination of steroids and antibiotics recovered faster than mice treated with antibiotics alone when it comes to reduction of lung inflammation.
From News-Medical.Net:
“Some people might think that if you give steroids, it would counteract the effect of the antibiotic,” said Dr. Robert Hardy, associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics and the study’s senior author. “But it turns out you need the antibiotic to kill the bug and the steroid to make the inflammation in the lung from the infection get better. The steroids don’t kill the bugs, but they do help restore health.”
Pneumonia is a lung infection typically characterized by breathing difficulties and spread by coughing and sneezing. Symptoms include headache, fever, chills, coughs, chest pain, sore throat and nausea. Pneumonia caused by the Mycoplasma pneumoniae bacterium is generally a less severe form of the disease that can occur in any age group. It accounts for 20 percent to 30 percent of all community-acquired pneumonia cases.
In the current study, mice infected with the M pneumoniae bacterium were treated daily with a placebo, an antibiotic, a steroid, or a combination of the antibiotic and steroid in order to investigate the effect on M pneumoniae-induced airway inflammation. The animals were then evaluated after one, three and six days of therapy.
“It turns out that the group that got both the antibiotic and the steroids did the best,” Dr. Hardy said. “The inflammation in their lungs got significantly better.”
The list of other UT Southwestern researchers involved in this study included Dr. Christine Salvatore, infectious-disease fellow in pediatrics; Dr. Chonnamet Techasaensiri, postdoctoral trainee in pediatrics; Dr. Asunción Mejías, assistant professor of pediatrics; Dr. Juan Torres, visiting senior researcher in pediatrics; Kathy Katz, senior research associate in pediatrics; and Dr. Ana Maria Gomez, assistant professor of pathology along with researchers from the University of Milan making contributions.
Category: Anabolic Steroids | Tags: antibiotics, lung infection, pneumonia, steroids