Fungous Disease as a Complication of Steroid Therapy

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Abstract
An effort is made herein to define the degree to which a dermatologist subjects his patients to the risk of fungous disease when he prescribes systemic steroid therapy. A fair amount of animal experimentation has been performed with an eye to answering this question. Much of the information deals with Candida albicans, Coccidiodes immitis, and Histoplasma capsulatum, and a less amount deals with Cryptococcus neoformans and various actinomycetes. Strangely, I could find no relevant experimental work utilizing the aspergilli, which, clinically, have been major offenders. Experimental Candida albicans infections in mice have usually been widely disseminated by the systemic administration of cortisone.1-6Scherr,2however, felt that in particularly severe Candida albicans infections cortisone actually had some ablative effect. He also believed that pituitary gonadotropic hormones lessened the tendency of the adrenocortical steroid to lower resistance to infection. Selye,7on the other

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