Will an every-other-day regimen of corticosteroids minimize or avoid the untoward effect of adrenal suppression?
"The use of single, every-otherday doses of prednisone circumvents this tendency to a considerable degree," said John G. Harter, MD, director, Allergy Laboratory, Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Boston.
"Our observations of marked adrenal suppression following a singledose, alternate-day steroid regimen contrast sharply with those reported by Harter and his co-workers," said S. C. Siegel, MD, clinical professor, pediatrics, University of California at Los Angeles Medical School.
Both researchers were reporting the results of their investigations to the annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy in Miami.
Harter and his co-investigator, Mark Novitch, MD, reported that in a nine-year study of 82 patients the results of ACTH tests for adrenal suppression of patients on 30 to 40 mg prednisone every other day "were indistinguishable statistically from patients not on steroids." A lower mean response to