“Polymyalgia Rheumatic vs late-onset Rheumatoid Arthritis”

[daworm]

academic.oup.com/rheumatolo...

[Hidden]

Hi daworn,

Thank you for the article, l’ve only glanced at it as l’m Moderating today but it looks very interesting.

I think more people may read it with a change of heading to the title of the article -

“Polymyalgia Rheumatic vs late-onset Rheumatoid Arthritis”

Can you edit it or would you like me to do it for you?

MrsN

[teesher]

Wish I had a medical brain - I had trouble understanding it apart from: higher incidence in the Anglo-Saxon population in comparison with the Mediterranean one.

[PMRpro Ambassador in reply to teesher]

Don't worry, it would have helped had it been written in English!! I'm struggling

[daworm in reply to PMRpro]

haha, I skipped half of it, I sort of got the main thoughts....I think I did anyway..

[SheffieldJane]

Yes it is. Thanks for posting it.

[Soraya_PMR]

I wish I’d had cortisol levels done pre-pred.

If I have trouble kickstarting my adrenals, will that be because they’ve ‘gone to sleep’ OR were they asleep or on partial strike before pred anyway?

[Hidden in reply to Soraya_PMR]

I do wonder about that in my case too. Years of high anxiety, stress, insomnia and other health issues must have some impacts on cortisol production. I wonder if it's like insulin resistance.

[Hidden in reply to Soraya_PMR]

I’ve already been down to 5mg & ran into Adrenal issues & l often wonder was my Cortisol Level Low prior to PMR because l had that awful fatigue!.......

[Soraya_PMR]

Interesting. Makes you wonder if the PMR (aka HPA problem?) was a consequence of your previous shorter courses of steroids.

Does the high stress that many of us complain of in the lead up to diagnosis, with elevated adrenaline and cortisol, ultimately lead to poor hormone production?

[daworm]

jeez, everyone knows about the axis...

[HeronNS]

I found I had a very uneventful taper to 1.5, just embarking on taper to 1. Whereupon my doctor made one mistake and I made another by agreeing with her when she suggested I use up my remaining tablets, stop and see what happened. What happened was a flare. A genuine one, not pred withdrawal, ended up in tears with a locum and elevated inflammatory markers. I reluctantly eventually went back up to 7 mg, and a rapid taper back down to about three or four, I forget. Since then, nearly two years ago, I have not been able to get below 2 mg again, and I have begun to believe that I'm not just lazy (this is what I've been calling myself) but genuinely fatigued - which had been a very minor, sporadic not chronic, problem for me before the flare. I honestly believe having to go up to 7 to contain the flare did some damage to me. And stress over the past year hasn't helped. What had seemed quite straightforward for two years has since become "problematic" (hubby hates that word).

[PMRCanada in reply to HeronNS]

I’ve had 2 flares now, and will be writing a post asking about this subject. Thanks for sharing.