Meet the editor

Prof. Celso Pereira, MD, Ph.D., is head-chief of the Clinical Immunology Unit and Clinical Herbal Medicine in Clinical Practice, Medicine Faculty, Coimbra University, Portugal. He is also a graduated specialist in immuno-allergy and has developed clinical activity at Coimbra Surgical Center. His main activities include clinical practice, education (pre and postgraduate), and clinical and laboratory research. He was president of the Immuno-Allergy

Board of the Portuguese Medical Association. He is the coordinator of some Portuguese clinical guidelines and a member of the national committee for the diagnostic procedures for allergy and clinical immunology and the national committee for COVID vaccination. His scientific interests include research in the mechanisms of respiratory allergy, specific immunotherapy, and medicinal plant applications.

Contents

*by Aml M. Erhuma*

Diseases

**Preface XI**

**Chapter 1 1**

**Chapter 2 19**

**Chapter 3 47**

**Chapter 4 65**

**Chapter 5 83**

**Chapter 6 103**

Applications of Corticosteroid Therapy in Inflammatory Rheumatic

Pharmacogenomics and Pharmacotranscriptomics of Glucocorticoids

*by Vladimir Gasic, Djordje Pavlovic, Biljana Stankovic, Nikola Kotur,* 

Corticosteroids in Neuro-Oncology: Management of Intracranial

*by Anca Emanuela Mușetescu, Cristina Criveanu, Anca Bobircă, Alesandra Florescu, Ana-Maria Bumbea and Florin Bobircă*

The Interaction between Maternal and Fetal Hypothalamic – Pituitary – Adrenal Axes

Corticosteroids in Otorhinolaryngology

in Pediatric Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

*Branka Zukic and Sonja Pavlovic*

Tumors and Peritumoral Edema

Corticosteroid Replacement Therapy

*by Sunbul S. Ahmed*

*by Michael C. Onyema*

*by Magdalena B. Skarzynska and Piotr H. Skarzynski*

## Contents


Preface

Corticosteroids came into use in the late 1940s, and today they represent an irreplaceable pharmacological group for treating numerous chronic conditions.

This book examines the biological intervention of endogenous steroids and their rational application for some clinical therapeutic approaches in different

The therapeutic use of corticosteroids is not limited to the clinical applications developed in this book. Indeed, anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive effects are crucial for a variety of disorders with expression in almost all organs and systems, namely, autoinflammatory, autoimmune, and allergic conditions, among others. This results in the availability of topical or systemic formulations, with specific and

In current precision medicine, the re-inventive capacity of corticosteroids is remarkable, with a plethora of mechanisms and new potentials that make them a pharmacological class with unique characteristics and persistently necessary for

I would like to thank all the contributing authors for providing up-to-date reviews

**Celso Pereira, MD, PhD** Clinical Immunology, Medicine Faculty, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

the effective therapeutic control of more and more clinical disorders.

individual bioavailability, mechanisms, and adverse effects.

and new clues for future research.

identified.

pathologies.

Continued scientific research has enabled the identification of numerous broadspectrum pharmacological mechanism signals through genomic and non-genomic pathways. The therapeutic efficacy of corticosteroids was well established in different inflammatory disorders long before many of these mechanisms were
