Home Page

Aspergillosis Patient Support

Formerly Aspergillus Trust and
Aspergillus Website for Patients

...funded by the Fungal Research Trust

Text size: normal | large | larger

Aspergillus for Patients Meeting, Rome, Feb 3rd, 2010
The following talk from this international meeting was recorded especially for patients with aspergillus related problems - designed to provide a resource for patients and address some of their questions.

Steroids, Aspergillus and antifungals

By Russell Lewis

Return to index page

Steroids, Aspergillus and antifungals
Russell E Lewis
University of Houston, Texas, USA

Humans and Aspergillus use similar enzyme pathways. Drugs designed to affect one pathway have the potential to affect multiple pathways.

Steroids are used to control inflammation in ABPA, but giving people cortisone suppresses their own production of cortisol (important for coping with stress and providing a feedback mechanism for the immune system) and can produce side effects including muscle weakness, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular complications, glaucoma, depression and osteoporosis.

Steroids affect natural immunity, suppressing cell-mediated immunity and masking the symptoms of infection. The risk of negative effects of steroid use can be minimised by direct administration of the medication to the lungs, and by using the minimum necessary dose.

Many drugs need to be modified by the liver before excretion. Azole antifungals (e.g. Itraconazole, Voriconazole and Posaconazole) work by inhibiting an enzyme found in fungi, but can also inhibit liver function.

With thanks to Fran Stokes

Info for viewing videos and slides:

The talks have copies of the powerpoint slides alongside- which are time synchronised to the videos of each speaker.
You can choose to watch the video only - by clicking on the image, or for optimal viewing

we suggest you click on "View Powerpoint slides" this will open a new browser window alongside the video. Make this window half your screen size (drag window edges),
and start the video at the same time as the slides.

The video is streamed from our server - so the video is not downloaded onto your computer. Depending on your broadband connection you may have to wait a few seconds for the stream to play.

Having problems viewing?

The plugins that are needed by the browsers are Flash Player and Powerpoint Viewer-(get these by clicking on the links). If you have Microsoft Office installed on your PC the Powerpoint viewer will load automatically.

Your browser eg. Internet Explorer 7&8, or Mozilla Firefox should handle these videos and slides without any extra downloads. If they dont you may need to get the more recent versions of your browsers.

email us for more help.