Adrenaline boosters? -- doctors and science nerds, help me create a medical fiction scenario!?

Question

Hi everyone! We're working on a zombie/survival horror thingy here, and we'd like some real doctor's advise.

Here's the plot: those infected by a strange disease (of possible alien origin) become zombies. Among other symptoms, they gain physical strength. We thought we could explain this by the alien organism inside them releasing some sort of steroid into the bloodstream, although we do not know if any such thing is possible in the real world (some tips on that would be nice). We also considered that the alien organism could force the body to produce high doses of adrenaline, which might account for the zombies' extra power boost. However, what we would really really like is for non-infected people to be able to gain that boost through pure infected blood transfusion, thus obtaining all the good parts of the disease and none of the zombieness. How really really stupid is that? Your comments and alternate suggestions would be highly appreciated.

If you're going technical, please state source and your education level.

THX a lot!

Answer 1

Hmm....seems cool yet horribly unrealistic (at least to me, a mere high school student after taking AP Biology >.>).

For the organism releasing steroids into the bloodstream, it could technically attach itself to the aorta and feed off of nutrients and produce a steroid as a byproduct, increasing the amount of steroids in the body. Also, for the adrenaline, the organism could also release loads of epinephrine, or speed up the conversion of norepinephrine and other catycholamines, into the bloodstream. This will not give you super strength, per se, but it will be increased strength nevertheless (fight or flight response - bursts of energy?).

For normal people to get the good stuff, maybe the organism releases a hormone/organism that actively targets the adrenal gland to cause the release of epinephrine. The hormone that causes the release of epinephrine in humans is called acetylcholine. The organism attached to the aorta could possibly produce organisms that travel to the adrenal gland via the bloodstream and release acetylcholine, causing the body to release epinephrine.

When unaffected people get tainted blood, the little organisms then swim to their adrenal glands and causes the adrenal glands to release more epinephrine.

I don't know lol...this is cool and I hope it works out. Email me with your finalized stuff!!

Hope I helped a bit o.O