Over 50 million adults worldwide are taking long-term glucocorticoids .^[1] Most are not monitored for steroid toxicity^[2] and about half of all health costs for patients who take steroids are linked to the steroids themselves.^[3] Steroid-toxicity causes lifelong damage to patients, increases risk to payers, and burdens health systems.

It all started 75 years ago

On September 4, 1948, the first dose of a glucocorticoid was administered to a bed-ridden 24-year-old woman with rheumatoid arthritis. The treatment of her condition with this new compound, cortisone, resulted in a dramatic reduction of inflammation that improved her function and sense of well-being. That patient’s ability to rise from bed and walk within one day astonished her physicians and ultimately marked a new era in the lives of millions of patients around the world. 

Just 23 days after that first dose of steroids, the first steroid-toxicity was reported. Doctors recognized that they had to slowly lower, or taper, the amount of glucocorticoid to find dose that would treat the disease and yet protect the patient from devastating side effects of the treatment.

At Steritas, we see that very first action to reduce steroid-toxicity in the first steroid patient as the first day of The Great Taper.

By 1960, the full range of 80+ steroid-toxicities had been described. Although debates raged about the proper use of steroids, by then the drugs had become entrenched as “necessary evils” in the struggle to manage inflammatory disease. The challenges of measuring and monitoring such a wide range of toxicities were not even approached until 2016 when a group of subspecialty experts from around the world convened to develop the Glucocorticoid Toxicity Index (GTI) - a validated clinical outcome assessment that captures and quantifies the nuances of change in steroid-toxicity.

To read more about the history of steroid-toxicity, click here