The purpose of this work is an update of the pharmacological treatment of dystrophinopathic cardiomyopathy combined with personal results. Steroids treatment In 2004, Manzur et al. (10) described the major http://www.selleckchem.com/screening/chemical-library.html findings of the Cochrane review regarding the results of five randomized controlled trials of the use of steroids in DMD. These trials presented evidence that use of daily prednisolone (0.75 mg/kg/day) or Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical deflazacort (DFZ) (0.9 mg/kg/day) is able to increase strength in DMD with slightly different side effect profiles. Deflazacort appears to cause less weight gain

and less bone mass deterioration, but more often it is associated with the development of asymptomatic cataracts. Long-term follow up Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of cohorts of patients treated under one or other of these drugs, and continuing the use of steroids beyond the loss of independent ambulation, showed that the increase in muscle strength was mirrored by improvement and possible preservation of cardiac function. The first study examining the effects of deflazacort treatment

on left ventricular cardiac function Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in DMD was published in 2003 by the group of D.W. Biggar (11). The study included 33 DMD patients, 21 of them taking DFZ for at least 3 years. The authors found that patients who have received DFZ for ≥ 3 years had a more preserved cardiac function than those who had not received the medication. In fact the prevalence of cardiomyopathy in the treated older patients was 5% compared with 58% in patients not treated. Preservation of cardiac muscle function was invariably associated with a better pulmonary and skeletal muscle function. Few and minor adverse effects were reported. Two years later Markham et al. (12) Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical published a retrospective cross-sectional study reviewing the echocardiograms of 111 Duchenne patients aged ≤ 21 years, in order to evaluate the effect of the steroid treatment on the natural history of cardiac function in DMD patients. Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Forty-eight out of 111 DMD patients had received steroids, prednisone [29] or DFZ [19]. Untreated and

steroids-treated subjects did not differ in age, height, weight, body mass index, systolic and diastolic blood pressure or left ventricular mass. The shortening fraction (SF) was used as a marker of left ventricular dysfunction and considered normal if it was greater than 28%. The results PD184352 (CI-1040) showed that FS was lower in the untreated group than in steroid-treated group (30% ± 7% vs. 36% ± 5%; p < 0.001). Furthermore, in the second decade there was a dramatic increase in the number of boys – mainly those untreated – with demonstrable abnormalities in cardiac function. Although this work did not satisfy the essential causal relationship criterion of temporality – cardiac evaluations were performed after steroid treatment – nevertheless it was the first study that compared the type of steroid and demonstrated the same beneficial effect on cardiac function with both drugs.