The influence of corticosteroids on the release of novel biomarkers in human endotoxemia.

ABSTRACT: Sepsis intervention studies need better patient stratification methods, and one way to realize this is the introduction of stable biomarkers. A set of recently developed novel biomarkers, based upon precursor-fragments of short-lived hormones, was previously shown to be increased during sepsis. However, it is not known whether these biomarkers are influenced by sepsis intervention strategies. Therefore we investigated the markers in a model of human endotoxemia intervened by increasing doses of prednisolone.Prospective, open-label study in a specialized clinical research unit of a university hospital.Thirty-two healthy male volunteers.Subjects received prednisolone orally at doses of 0, 3, 10 or 30 mg (n=8 per group) at 2 h before intravenous injection of Escherichia coli lipopolysaccharide (LPS) (4 ng/kg). Blood samples were drawn during 24 h after LPS injection.LPS injection caused an increase in levels of midregional pro-adrenomedullin (MR-proADM), midregional pro-atrial natriuretic peptide (MR-proANP), C-terminal pro-arginine-vasopressin (CT-proAVP) and procalcitonin (PCT). Prednisolone caused a dose dependent inhibition of MR-proADM, MR-proANP and CT-proAVP levels.These results show that a set of novel, highly stable sepsis biomarkers was increased during human endotoxemia and was dose-dependently inhibited by corticosteroid pre-treatment.

SUBMITTER: de Kruif MD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2244699 | biostudies-other | 2008 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other