Steroids are commonly used drugs and prescribed by almost all the medical subspecialties. They work very well because of their anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive properties and patients feel better almost immediately on steroids. Commonly used steroids are prednisone, dexamethasone, and methylprednisolone. In this article I would like to review adrenal insufficiency mainly because of the steroid use. I think any physician who prescribes steroids should be aware of secondary adrenal insufficiency because of steroid use.
The purpose of writing this article is to recognize how common secondary adrenal insufficiency is because of wide spread use of steroids. Let’s review the normal physiology so that we can understand the abnormal pathology. Adrenal gland can be divided histologically into three parts zona glomerulosa, zona fasiculata and zona reticularis. Zona glomerulosa, zona…
