How much do steroids reduce the size of lymph nodes?

Hi Nick, without understanding your thinking on this you may be overthinking again in prep for the scan, yes steroids can help reduce the masses but it does not treat them in simple terms, that's what the chemo does, so to the best of my knowledge I have never heard anyone state that steroids were the reason for a false positive scan. Scar tissue can and an infection or inflammation will distort or mislead potentially, if its a PET rather than a CT then he will be given a score, which is called the Deauville score, 3 or less is good at the mid point scan and the lower the number the better as you would assume. Comparing scans is good to as you can see the reduction, in my case still had the abdominal mass though a little smaller and all the hot spots in the small intestine had gone, so I knew it was working. 

All the signs show its working for your son too, from what you have shared, so work on a good outcome until someone tells you otherwise, thats where playing your own mind games and looking for the positives helps.

hope this helps

John 

Hi John

i was just wondering in terms of the feel of the palpable ones, how much the physical reduction of the node could be down to the steroids as opposed to the other parts of the chemo. I have read that steroids do reduce the size of them as they are poisonous to lymphocytes. 

The scans will determine how much disease remains, and that is critical, but where prednisone (?) is given with the chemo, it may not be as easy to gauge pre-scan whether any reduction is due to the steroid or chemo, in contrast to the situation where no steroid is given . I’m not sure if ABVD for instance, for adults, includes any steroid as part of treatment? 

Hope that makes more sense? Not worried just genuinely interested as to whether the inclusion of steroid as part of paediatric treatment makes it harder to assess whether any reduction is due to reduction of swelling or actual disease?

perhaps one for a medical expert? But that is what I meant in terms of false positive.

Nick I think because steroids have a multiple role during treatment I would see them in a supporting role and the main player will always be the drugs whether that be chemo, immunotherapy or one of the other treatments. Adults on abvd do normally receive prednisone as part of the treatment regime the same as I did for NHL and its normally for the first 5 days, they help with appetite, feeling better and help the chemo attack the disease, hence the view its a supporting role. But certainly one for the medics as I would not want to share more that may be inaccurate as it would be my understanding.

Good to see its driven by interest rather than worry.

John 

Cheers John. 

Appreciate your thoughts on this. 

Hi,

I haven't had steroids as part of my chemotherapy treatment but I was on a strong dosage of them for a few weeks whilst in hospital before treatment started. I was given them to help reduce some of the inflammation of my mediastinal mass which was affecting my breathing, and so the steroids were helpful in reducing my symptoms and making life more bearable at this time. However, even whilst on steroids another node on my neck appeared and so although steroids can help reduce inflammation and certain symptoms, they aren't killing the cancer cells and so didn't stop another node from occurring in my case. 

I was told by doctors and information from bloodwise that steroids do help to make the chemotherapy more effective but that is simply it and so its the other drugs that are killing the cells and reducing their activity. I think I personally haven't been given any steroids during my chemo because I had so many beforehand and the long term side effects aren't great - my face was also very puffy to say the least from the water retention haha! 

Hope this helps anyway. 

Interesting, thank you very much Luna-May.

With OEPA steroids are part of the treatment (Predisonome) or something like that(:-. .

Just curious as to why it’s standard each regime in young people (kids and teenagers) but not standard with adults.

There is obviously a reason. 

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