Steroid therapy can modulate gut barrier function, host defense, and survival in thermally injured mice.

Prednisone may be immunosuppressive and dehydroepiandrosterone may stimulate the immune response, but their effect on gut-origin sepsis caused by bacterial translocation has not been studied. Balb/c mice were treated orally with prednisone (1 or 10 mg/kg/day) or saline for 4 days before receiving gavage with 10 (10) 14 C-labeled Escherichia coli and a 20% thermal injury. Mice were transfused with allogeneic blood and given dehydroepiandrosterone (5 or 25 mg/kg/day) or vehicle subcutaneously for 4 days before bacterial gavage and thermal injury. Some groups in each experiment were observed 10 days for mortality and others were sacrificed 4 hr postburn to measure translocation and survival of translocated bacteria. Survival in prednisone treated animals was 25% (10 mg/kg/day) and 75% (1 mg/kg/day) versus 80% for controls. Following dehydroepiandrosterone administration, survival was 72% (25 mg/kg/day/group) and 30% (5 mg/kg/day/group) versus 16% for controls. High dose prednisone increased bacterial translocation to the intestinal wall and mesenteric lymph nodes and greatly impaired killing of translocated E. coli. In contrast, dehydroepiandrosterone (25 mg/kg) did not affect translocation but significantly improved bacterial killing. Prednisone and dehydroepiandrosterone exert opposite effects during gut-derived sepsis.