Meprednisone

Background:
Glucocorticoids (GC) were included in the list of banned substances in sports in 1986, because of evidences of positive effects on physical performance and the important health risks associated with its consumption.
Due to the fact that GC are commercialized in a variety of pharmaceutical forms and are administered in different ways, it is necessary to establish discrimination criteria to guarantee the therapeutic use of these drugs and to prevent doping.
Hypothesis:
Discrimination criteria between allowed and prohibited administrations of GC must be specific for each of the compounds. Further studies are needed to provide discrimination criteria related to oral administration of GC.
Objectives:
To conduct excretion studies with dexamethasone, methylprednisolone and deflazacort in order to define notification levels and wash-out periods after the administration of a single dose (DEX, MP and DEF) or repeated doses (DEX and MP) of these drugs.
Methods:
Non-randomized, open-label, pharmacokinetics clinical trial where a single dose of DEF, MP and DEX and also a multi-dose of DEX and MP will be administered orally to healthy volunteers (total n=50).

Therapy of severe intestinal graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) despite the introduction of novel target agents is associated with worse outcome compared to the other forms. Response to steroids is observed only in about 10% of patients. The most promising approaches are JAK inhibition and fecal microbiota transplantation. In this pilot study we evaluate this combination treatment in the first line.