Role of Corticosteroids in Oral Lesions

Glucocorticoids were first introduced in the 1940s and have become a widely prescribed class of drugs. Corticosteroids are a class of chemicals that includes steroid hormones naturally produced in the adrenal cortex of vertebrates and analogues of these hormones that are synthesized in laboratories. Corticosteroids are involved in a wide range of physiologic processes, including stress response, immune response, and regulation of inflammation, carbohydrate metabolism, protein catabolism, blood electrolyte levels, and behavior. They are some of the most common drugs for management of patients undergoing stressful situations such as surgery and dentstry (Gibson 2004).