Posts Tagged ‘vitamin D’

Low levels of vitamin D were found to be linked with minimized lung function and medication use in children with asthma, as per researchers at National Jewish Health.

This finding was revealed in a paper published online this week in the Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology.

From Sciencedaily.com:

“Our findings suggest two possible explanations,” said senior author Donald Leung, MD, PhD. “It could be that lower vitamin D levels contribute to increasing asthma severity, which requires more corticosteroid therapy. Or, it may be that vitamin D directly affects steroid activity, and that low levels of vitamin D make the steroids less effective, thus requiring more medication for the same effect.”

The researchers performed a series of laboratory experiments that indicated vitamin D enhances the action of corticosteroids. They cultured some immune cells with the corticosteroid dexamethasone alone and others with vitamin D first, then dexamethasone. The vitamin D significantly increased the effectiveness of dexamethasone. In one experiment vitamin D and dexamethasone together were more effective than 10 times as much dexamethasone alone.

The researchers also incubated immune-system cells for 72 hours with a staphylococcal toxin to induce corticosteroid resistance. Vitamin D restored the activity of dexamethasone.

“Our work suggests that vitamin D enhances the anti-inflammatory function of corticosteroids,’ said Dr. Leung. “If future studies confirm these findings vitamin D may help asthma patients achieve better control of their respiratory symptoms with less medication.”

Daniel Searing, MD, and his colleagues reported that ability of Vitamin D for enhancing the activity of the most effective controller medication for asthma, corticosteroids.

Two abstracts summarizing Emory research on the hormone were presented direction at the 2009 Society for Neuroscience (SFN) meeting in Chicago to examine whether the idea of testing progesterone to optimize efficacy of the hormone for treating patients suffering from traumatic brain injury is worth an effort. The trial was developed by Donald Stein, PhD, Asa G. Candler Professor of Emergency Medicine at Emory School of Medicine.

A multisite phase III clinical trial called ProTECT III would be started in the near future to examine the hormone efficacy.

From Sciencedaily.com:

One of the SFN abstracts reports on progesterone analogues that are more water-soluble. This work comes from Stein and his colleagues in collaboration with the laboratory of Dennis Liotta, PhD, Emory professor of chemistry.

Currently, the lack of water solubility limits delivery of progesterone, in that the hormone must be prepared hours ahead and cannot be kept at room temperature. Small chemical modifications may allow similar compounds with the same effects as progesterone to be given to patients closer to the time of injury.

According to the results, two compounds similar to progesterone showed an equivalent ability to reduce brain swelling in an animal model of traumatic brain injury.

The second abstract describes evidence that adding vitamin D to progesterone enhances the hormone’s effectiveness when applied to neurons under stress in the laboratory. Like progesterone, vitamin D is a steroid hormone that is inexpensive, has good safety properties and acts on many different biochemical pathways.

It was noted by the authors that even low amounts of vitamin D can boost progesterone’s ability of guarding that is a principal cause of brain injury and cell death.

According to two abstracts highlighting Emory research on the hormone were presented at the 2009 Society for Neuroscience (SFN) meeting in Chicago, Progesterone can be highly effective for treating patients suffering from traumatic brain injury and is therefore tested for optimization.

This trial was developed by Donald Stein, PhD, Asa G. Candler Professor of Emergency Medicine at Emory School of Medicine.

From Sciencedaily.com:

One of the SFN abstracts reports on progesterone analogues that are more water-soluble. This work comes from Stein and his colleagues in collaboration with the laboratory of Dennis Liotta, PhD, Emory professor of chemistry.

Currently, the lack of water solubility limits delivery of progesterone, in that the hormone must be prepared hours ahead and cannot be kept at room temperature. Small chemical modifications may allow similar compounds with the same effects as progesterone to be given to patients closer to the time of injury.

According to the results, two compounds similar to progesterone showed an equivalent ability to reduce brain swelling in an animal model of traumatic brain injury.

The second abstract describes evidence that adding vitamin D to progesterone enhances the hormone’s effectiveness when applied to neurons under stress in the laboratory. Like progesterone, vitamin D is a steroid hormone that is inexpensive, has good safety properties and acts on many different biochemical pathways.

It was noted by the authors that a small amount of Vitamin D may improve the ability of progesterone to guard neurons from excito-toxicity, biggest cause of brain injury and cell death.