The finding was revealed by pediatric oncologists at the Brenner Children’s Hospital, part of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

From News-Medical.Net:

“Steroids are used to treat leukemia and they suppress the immune system,” said Thomas McLean, a pediatric oncologist at Brenner Children’s Hospital. “When a child is exposed to the varicella virus (the virus that causes chicken pox) around the time they are receiving steroid treatment, they are more likely to contract a more severe case of chicken pox.”

McLean and his colleagues studied 697 patients with acute leukemia over a nine-year period. About 16 percent or 110 patients contracted chicken pox. Of those 110 patients, 54 had severe disease, including two deaths. Of the patients whose chicken pox was diagnosed within three weeks of taking steroids, 70 percent had severe infection whereas only 44 percent of those who had not received steroid therapy within three weeks had severe infection. Although the study was limited to patients with leukemia, the findings may apply to other conditions for which steroids are used, McLean said.

“One of the things we need to remember to ask before we prescribe steroid treatment is whether the child has had a recent exposure to chicken pox,” McLean said. “If so, we recommend waiting until the incubation period has passed before beginning steroid therapy.”

It was noted that chicken pox, though mild in nature, can result in fatal complications. It is worth noting here that there were approximately 12,000 deaths from chicken pox on a yearly basis before the discovery of varicella vaccine.

The study suggested that health of a patient suffering from pneumonia can be restored easily if steroids are administered in a combination with antibiotics as compared to the use of antibiotics alone.

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.

The study led by Dr. Robert Hardy, Study’s Senior Author & Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, also suggested that steroids are good for treating inflammation of the lungs while antibiotics prove effective for killing the bug.

However, good news associated with its treatment is that a new research has been carried out by Isareli experts which says that steroid nasal sprays can help ease symptoms of sinus in a much better way and also aid in speedy recovery to a great extent. This can prove to be of great advantage for patients suffering from it because sinus is an extremely painful state for the patient.

From news-medical.net:

Every year, nearly 37 million Americans suffer from the sinus pressure, nasal congestion, cough and postnasal drip that accompany sinusitis.

Doctors often prescribe antibiotics to relieve acute sinusitis, which can develop following a chest cold. However, steroid nasal sprays – either alone or with antibiotic therapy - may better ease symptoms and speed recovery, suggests a new review by Israeli researchers.

In this review, Anca Zalmanovici, a family physician at Rabin Medical Center in Petach Tikva, and her co-author analyzed data from four randomized controlled trials including nearly 2,000 participants, all with clinical symptoms of acute sinusitis.

The review appears in the current issue of The Cochrane Library , a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates research in all aspects of health care. Systematic reviews draw evidence-based conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content and quality of existing trials on a topic.

The research was carried out by taking a sample size of nearly 2000 participants for randomized trials suffering from severe sinusitis. The patients who had to undergo X-ray or nasal endoscopy in order to confirm the diagnosis either received a placebo or intranasal corticosteroids for two or three weeks. They were injected with steroids alone or in combination with antibiotics as well, The Intranasal corticosteroids used primarily included fluticasone propionate (Flonase), mometasone furoate (Nasonex) and the evry well known budesonide (Rhinocort).