Dexamethasone

Butterfly · July 02, 2010, 03:26:32 PM

Dexamethasone
A.E. Brain
By Zoe Brain
02 July, 2010

http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2010/07/dexamethasone.html

As a follow-up to a previous post in March concerning CAH - congenital adrenal hyperplasia.

From TIME :

Langford and her husband learned they were silent carriers of the genetic variation that causes CAH when their son was diagnosed with the condition after birth. Their son — like the 1 in 16,000 babies born with CAH each year in the U.S. — faces a lifetime of taking powerful steroid medications to compensate for his faulty adrenal glands. When Langford contacted New about her second pregnancy, New, who was not Langford's regular doctor, called a local pediatric endocrinologist. That doctor prescribed Langford a commonly used medication for CAH. "Dr. New told me I had to start taking dexamethasone immediately," says Langford, 30, who lives in Tampa. "We felt very confident in someone of her stature and that what she was telling us was the right thing to do."
...
The early prenatal use of dexamethasone, or dex, has been shown to prevent some of the symptoms of CAH in girls, namely ambiguous genitalia. Because the condition causes overproduction of male hormones in the womb, girls who are affected tend to have genitals that look more male than female, though internal sex organs are normal.

Post Merge: July 02, 2010, 03:44:04 PM

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