Steroid research could bring new drugs with fewer side effects
New anti-inflammatory drugs that avoid the harmful side effects of steroids could be developed after the discovery of a key mechanism that these treatments use to combat inflammation, says research in Nature Communications.
Experts examined how glucocorticoids (a commonly-prescribed class of steroid hormones) control inflammation. They already knew that some steroids target a master regulator inflammation called nuclear factor-kB. But in the new research they discovered that these therapies also help to control IRAK-M, an important feedback regulator of inflammation that inhibits the activation of key proteins.
This means that IRAK-M is now known to be a new target of glucocorticoids to suppress bacteria-induced inflammation, which in turn could open the door for new approaches focused on the same mechanism.
The researchers hope that they can copy the positive impact that steroid treatments can have on inflammatory conditions such as arthritis, while avoiding the side effects associated with these drugs (such as risk of infections, liver damage, high blood pressure, bone thinning and weight gain).
“Chronic inflammatory diseases last for months and years, so you have to have a medicine that can be used for treating inflammation for the long term without having side effects,” explains lead investigator Dr Jian-Dong Li.
A spokesman for Arthritis Research UK comments:
“Steroids are highly effective in suppressing inflammation and are valuable drugs in the short term. However, their side effects render them less than desirable in the longer term. Developing medications that retain the effectiveness of steroids without those side effects would be a major step forward in the treatment of inflammatory forms of arthritis.”
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