Ranking of topical corticosteroids: principles and results

The increasing synthesis and use of topical corticosteroid products over the past 30 years has necessitated the development of suitable methods for evaluating the efficacy and potency of new drug entities. Several in vivo models have been developed in this regard using laboratory animals and human subjects. Generally, these tests measure the difference in the non-immunological inflammatory response to an exogenous inflammatory mediator in the presence and absence of the corticosteroid under test. There are also immunologically based assays and several tests which assess the anti proliferative effects of the drug. Several comparative disease model evaluations have also been developed using human subjects. Most of these assays are non-ideal from one point of view or another: most are invasive methods which require some form of trauma to be induced in the skin and therefore problematic to perform and monitor