Currently down my way in East Sussex, there seems to be a problem for the pharmacies to get hold of 1mg coated pred... is this happening countrywide?
Also, my surgery has offered me the shingles jab and I would be very grateful if you could let me know what sort it should be... it would probably take me a week or two to scroll back to find the advice... many thanks in advance.
I believe it is still the case that only the older, live, Zostovax shingles vaccine is available on the NHS because of supply issues with Shingrix which is only available privately at about £420 for the two injections.
Here are links to two posts I wrote about it:
There seems to be a problem for the pharmacies to get hold of 1mg coated pred... is this happening countrywide?
Mine in Northants has the same problem its been going on for months.
I live in Spain and you can’t get 1mg tablets here at all which makes tapering all the more difficult.
The coated pred is a different matter - it is only available in the UK and the 1mg version was a relatively recent addition (2016) after them always claiming 1mg enteric coated would not be cost-effective which I suspect may be the problem now. Few people need 1mg doses - cutting a 5mg to give 2.5mg with ordinary pred is OK for most purposes.
I'm in West Sussex and we have intermittent difficulties in getting the 1mg uncoated pred. I'm getting them at the moment but trying to squirrel them away as far as possible in case supplies dry up again.
Local pharmacy stopped getting it. No trouble with Tesco supplying it.
Have not been able obtain 1 mg enteric coated in West London for nearly a year. Were previously available. Makes reducing very difficult as react very badly to plain prednisolone in spite of esomeprazole and yoghurt and breakfast before pills . I keep asking pharmacist
The DSNS approach was partly developed to help people like you in the days when there was no 1mg enteric coated pred. If you extend it or repeat each step at least a couple of times it can work OK:
Mixing coated and uncoated pred
Coated pred
PMR Shingles and tapering pred
