ergo-log.com

Definition: "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance "

18.12.2008

Ursodeoxycholic acid restores anabolic liver

Mexican doctors managed to repair a bodybuilder's damaged using the bile acid ursodeoxycholic acid, UDCA for short. UDCA is a cholesterol regulator that humans manufacture in small quantities in the body. Doctors and supplements manufacturers use a synthetic version of the substance. The full name for UDCA is 3-alpha,7-beta-dihydroxy-5-alpha-cholan-24-oic acid. [Structure below]

Case
The 29-year-old bodybuilder had been suffering from stomach pain for two months. Two weeks before he went to the doctor he also developed jaundice and itching. He had lost fourteen kilograms.

The doctors discovered that his liver was in a bad way. The steroids the bodybuilder had been taking had given him cholestasis, a condition in which the ducts in the liver become inflamed and therefore cannot remove bile to the duodenum. Bile removes cholesterol from the body.

Before becoming ill, the bodybuilder had taken a three-month course of 25 mg of proviron per day, 40 mg of andriol per day, 30 mg of deca per day, 50 mg of oxymetholone per day and 800 mg of testosterone per day. [It's there in black and white – Ed.]

Treatment
The doctors got the bodybuilder to stop taking the steroids and gave him a daily 15 mg per kg bodyweight of ursodeoxycholic acid. Ursodiol, as it is also called, removes poisonous bile acids and possibly also steroids from the liver by competition - and thus stimulates the recovery of the ducts through which the liver sends the bile acid to the duodenum in the gut. [Gut. 1991 Sep;32(9):1061-5.] It took a couple of months but the bodybuilder's liver function recovered.

Alb = albumin; ALT = alanine aminotransferase; AP = alkaline phosphatase; AST = aspartate aminotransferase; DB = direct bilirubin; GGT = gamma-glutamyltransferase; PT = prothrombin time; TB = total bilirubin; TPT = partial thromboplastin time.

Sources:
Liver Int. 2008 Feb;28(2):278-82.