Corticosteroid
Also called: prednisone, dexamethasone
What it means
Corticosteroids like prednisone and dexamethasone are anti-inflammatory medications that, especially with long-term use, can weaken bone by slowing bone building and speeding up bone breakdown.
If you take prednisone, dexamethasone, or a similar steroid for more than a few months, your bones may be quietly losing strength, so it's worth discussing bone health monitoring with your prescriber.
Corticosteroids are a class of medications — prednisone and dexamethasone are common examples — used to calm inflammation in conditions like asthma, arthritis, and many autoimmune diseases. They work partly by mimicking cortisol, your body's natural stress hormone. While they're very effective at controlling inflammation, they also have a strong effect on bone, acting from several directions at once.
On bone, corticosteroids slow down osteoblasts (the cells that build new bone) while making osteoclasts (the cells that break bone down) more active. They also reduce how much calcium your gut absorbs from food and increase how much calcium your kidneys let you lose. Together, these changes can lead to bone loss that starts within the first few months of taking the medication, and the amount of loss tends to depend on the dose. Even high-dose inhaled steroids carry some risk.
Because steroid-induced bone loss is so well recognized, guidelines recommend bone health monitoring or protection for people taking corticosteroids for more than three months. If you're on one of these medications, decisions about dose, duration, or any bone-protective treatment belong with your prescriber — they can weigh the benefits of the medication against the bone effects and recommend appropriate monitoring.
How sure is this?
Graded Established Science: Supported by broad scientific consensus and decades of research. Read each study with its grade in mind. One study is a piece of the picture, not the whole of it.
Where the Academy teaches it
This page is the short version. The lessons teach it in full, with the context around it and a quiz to lock it in.
Questions people ask about this
Yes, it's possible — a number of common medications can affect bone, so it's a smart question to ask. This doesn't mean you should change anything on your own; it just means it's worth reviewing your full medication list with your prescriber to understand whether bone monitoring makes sense for you.
Read the full answer →Related words
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Education only, not medical advice. Decisions about tests, medications and treatment belong with your own doctor. OsteoStrong does not diagnose, treat or cure any disease.
