Historical Overview of Antenatal Steroid Use

In a field moving as fast as this one, history could be defined as everything that appeared through last month's publications; however, I chose to focus on events that occurred mostly before 1985. The important and ever-accelerating basic science supports the fact that giving antenatal glucocorticoids in the event of preterm labor could be considered a physiologic rather than a pharmacologic intervention, in as much as one role of the fetal adrenal cortex is to increase the cortisol levels in the weeks before term birth. In fact the adrenal gland at birth is 10 to 20 times larger than in the adult, relative to body weight.1