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13.06.2019

How harmful is ecdysterone?

The chance that ecdysteroids end up on the doping list has increased a little by an animal study that researchers from Zhengzhou University in China published in Scientific Reports. The definition of doping agents is that they not only improve performance, but can also endanger health. And according to the Chinese animal study, ecdysteroids can indeed do the latter. Perhaps.

Study
The researchers injected mice for 2 weeks daily with the ecdysteroid ecdysterone. If the mice had been human, they would have received about 50 milligrams of ecdysterone daily.

We honestly don't know the oral equivalent of that dose, but it could be quite high. The oral bioavailability of ecdysterone and other ecdysteroids is not that good. It's very low actually. It more than possible that the side effects that the Chinese have discovered cannot occur in supplement users.

Restricting themselves to cardiovascular disease, the New Orleans researchers tried to answer that question. For this, they used the data from almost a half-million Britons, who had been collected in the Biobank study. The data collection began in the 2006-2010 period, and the researchers were able to follow the study participants until 2016.

Results
The kidneys of the mice were enlarged after the ecdysterone cycle.

At the same time, the urine of the test animals had started to contain more albumin proteins through the administration of ecdysterone. Together with the enlargement of the kidneys, this indicates kidney damage.

Using computer models the researchers found out that edysterone can interact with the mineralocorticoid receptor [MR].

The mineralocorticoid receptor is intended for hormones like aldosterone. Aldosterone allows the body to retain more fluid and increases blood pressure. A high blood pressure can in turn lead to kidney damage.

The researchers then exposed kidney cells to ecdysterone in test tubes. They saw that ecdysterone activated the mineralocorticoid receptor, and let them travel from the cytosol to the cell nucleus. This did not happen if the researchers also put spironolactone in the test tubes. Spironolactone is a mineralocorticoid receptor blocker.

Conclusion
"The anabolic or hypertrophic effect of ecdysone is not limited to muscles but also applies to organ systems such as the liver and kidney", write the researchers. "Ecdysone has been demonstrated to directly increase protein synthesis and hypertrophy in a variety of cell types. However, kidney hypertrophy may be a prelude to progressive chronic kidney disease."

"This harmful effect is likely accounted for by a mineralocorticoid-like activity of ecdysone that is able to activate the mineralocorticoid receptor in glomerular cells and trigger cytopathic changes, and can be abolished by the mineralocorticoid receptor blocker spironolactone."

"Our findings suggest that the use of ecdysone, a popular anabolic and adaptogenic agent, may be problematic, at least for kidney health and thus warrants extra precautions."

Source:
Sci Rep. 2018 Aug 15;8(1):12225.

More:
Thanks to ecdysterone supplementation, strength athletes gain 2 kilos of muscle mass in 10 weeks 30.05.2019
Couple of milligrams ecdysterone daily strengthens bones 04.08.2015
Anabolic effect of ecdysterone strong enough to put it on the doping list 06.08.2014

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