Steroids stop the itch — and that’s exactly the problem. They mask the symptom while the real cause spreads underneath. Here’s why corticosteroids so often make pet skin conditions worse, not better.
Why not steroids?
Corticosteroid drugs — “steroids” for short — are potent chemical substances that reduce swelling and inflammation quickly. Common corticosteroids used to treat skin issues in dogs include cortisone, hydrocortisone, prednisolone, and prednisone.
These compounds reduce itching by reducing inflammation. In other words, they treat the symptom of itching, but they can do nothing about the underlying cause of the itch.
And they don’t act locally. Steroids affect every organ in the body.
How they get over-used
Prednisone is the most potent anti-inflammatory and anti-itch steroid, and it’s often used for treating allergies in dogs. It’s usually reserved for moderate-to-severe skin allergies, or skin diseases that are difficult to diagnose.
Unfortunately, these medications are often over-prescribed — without a positive diagnosis, and without careful monitoring. Pet owners can be sent home with a prescription having no idea how serious the potential side effects are.
The secondary infection problem
Whether a dog has hot spots, mange, or oral allergies, it’s often the secondary infection — bacterial, fungal, or yeast — that causes the worst itching.
If steroids are given to treat that itching, the underlying secondary infection gets a boost. It gets much worse, very quickly.
Here’s why: cortisones depress lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell. With those suppressed, bacterial infections occur more easily and then proliferate unchecked. In plain English — steroids can compromise, or outright crash, your pet’s natural immune system.
What that looks like in practice
When the immune system crashes from prolonged steroid use, the picture gets ugly. The dog loses hair. The skin blackens. A terrible odour develops. The itching becomes insane.
At that stage, traditional medicine often has nothing left to offer. Your vet may recommend euthanasia.
This is not an abstract risk. It’s the situation that Dr. Adelia Ritchie — Dermagic’s founder — was facing with her own dog when she went home and started formulating instead. It’s the case that Dermagic was built to treat.
A special case: steroids and hair loss
Everything above concerns itchy, inflamed skin, where the argument against steroids is about masking a problem and suppressing the immune response.
With hair loss there’s a second and more direct problem, and it’s worth knowing separately: glucocorticoids inhibit hair growth. Chronic exposure suppresses follicular activity and causes follicular atrophy, thin skin, comedones and bilaterally symmetrical hair loss across the trunk.
That’s a description of Alopecia X — which is why steroid-induced Cushing’s is one of the conditions a vet has to rule out before diagnosing it. Reaching for a steroid on a dog that’s losing coat risks producing more of exactly what you’re trying to treat.
Alopecia X is also non-inflammatory and non-itchy in itself, so there’s nothing there for a steroid to suppress in the first place. If such a dog is itchy, that’s secondary infection on exposed skin, and it needs treating as an infection. The full picture is in Alopecia X treatment: what works, what doesn’t, and why.
Even short-term, careful
Even holistic and naturopathic veterinarians sometimes recommend small amounts of corticosteroids during a bad flare — classically a flea-allergy flare — to give an affected pet some relief.
A note on the phrase we used to use here. This said “during flea season,” and in Britain and Ireland there is no such thing. Surveillance across 191 GB practices over six years found flea cases in every month of the year, peaking July to October. Treating fleas as a summer problem is how a flea-allergic animal spends the winter itching. See flea allergy dermatitis in dogs and cats.
But these treatments are dangerous if prolonged. At best, they offer temporary relief of symptoms. They never address the cause. And they put the immune system at risk every time they’re used.
The Dermagic alternative
Dermagic is free from corticosteroids. What it offers is topical care: a clean surface, scale and crust softened and lifted, broken skin kept covered while it closes, and a barrier that is supported rather than stripped.
This section has been cut back considerably. It used to promise that Dermagic was “immediately effective” at “fighting fungal and bacterial infestations” and “promoting healing”, and that the Skin Rescue Lotion and Hot Spot Salve “kill the pathogens topically” and do “the work that a steroid shot can’t”. It closed by saying the System “treats the infection rather than masking it”.
All of that is withdrawn. Three separate problems with it:
- We do not claim to kill organisms. A topical presented as killing pathogens is presenting itself as a veterinary medicine, and ours are not.
- It set up a false equivalence. A steroid injection and a skincare range are not two options for the same job. Steroids control inflammation, which is something no shampoo does. The honest contrast is that a steroid buys relief without addressing the cause, and good topical care is something you can keep doing indefinitely without that trade-off — not that one replaces the other.
- An established infection needs a vet. If there is a diagnosed bacterial or fungal infection, the answer is a diagnosis and usually a chlorhexidine-based topical, which has the best evidence of any wash in canine dermatology and which we do not sell.
The useful version of the argument survives all three corrections: if your dog is on a cycle of cortisone shots for recurring itch, the thing worth pursuing is what is causing the itch — most often allergy — and alongside that a routine of gentle topical care that does not come with a cumulative cost. That is the case for the four-step Dermagic System, and it is a case we can make without overstating it.
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Try the steroid-free route — dermagic.eu →For specific guidance on your pet’s case, email customerservice@dermagic.eu or call +44 7425 388643.