Yusaku Kumagai, Matthew W Kemp, Haruo Usuda, Tsukasa Takahashi, Yuki Takahashi, Hirotaka Hamada, Augusto F Schmidt, Takushi Hanita, Shimpei Watanabe, Shinichi Sato, Hideyuki Ikeda, Erin L Fee, Lucy Furfaro, John P Newnham, Alan H Jobe, Nobuo Yaegashi, Masatoshi Saito
Despite widespread use, dosing regimens for antenatal corticosteroid (ACS) therapy are poorly unoptimized. ACS therapy exerts a programming effect on fetal development, which may be associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Having demonstrated that low-dose steroid therapy is an efficacious means of maturing the preterm lung, we hypothesized that a low-dose steroid exposure would exert fewer adverse functional and transcriptional changes on the fetal heart. We tested this hypothesis using low-dose steroid therapy (10 mg delivered to the ewe over 36 h via constant infusion) and compared cardiac effects with those of a higher dose treatment (30 mg delivered to the ewe over 24 h by intramuscular injection; simulating currently employed clinical ACS regimens)...
June 1, 2023: Reproductive Sciences