I tend to be one of those people who believes everything does have a cause, but medical science has not figured it all out yet. I don’t think there is always one single cause though for disease, I think many factors play in, and blame does not do any good, but undertsanding can help. Maybe the prednisone brought it on earlier than it might have happened, or was the tipping point, of all of the other things happening that were contributing to her getting Hodgkins. I actually have no knowledge of the two being related, except that as mentioned above steroids inhibit our immune systems, our bodies natural ability to fight foreign invaders and disease. Steroids are to be avoided, except when necessary.
My father got a DVT following steroid use, and his doctor who prescribed it told him its a coinsidence. My mom looked it up, and steroid use has been implicated in blood clots, and the doctor he went to for the treatment said it is likely it was the steroids. My father needed bipass at the age of 46 and had to have one of his carotid arteries closed off in his early 60’s. He is a high risk patient for blood clots and heart disease, and more care should have been taken in what was prescribed. I see this all the time doctors don’t think anything will go wrong, and don’t know enough about how drugs are more likely in some patients to cause trouble. Prescribing steroids for your mom, probably does not fall into this category, she may have had no indications she was more likely to have problems taking prednisone, and she probably wanted the medication, she wanted to feel better. Even if there evidence that steroids can lead to Hodgkins (which I don’t think there is) she might have opted to take the medicine anyway. There are studies showing hormone replacement causes more breast cancer, but women take it every day, and viagra heart attack, but men take it all of the time, and Tylenol acute liver failure, etc. But, this is a time where you can really think about how every drug has a side effect.