Does anyone know anything about the use of deflazacort instead of prednisone for PMR?

[benhemp]

Searching the web tonight for prednisone information, I came across deflazacort for the first time. It seems to have better characteristics in terms of less bone loss and other side effects. The article I found (link below) talks about kidney transplantation; does anyone know whether it is being used for PMR? I realize there may be reasons (cost, dosage, etc.) why it makes sense for the former but not for the latter. I thought someone here might know.

Here's the link to the article:

academic.oup.com/jcem/artic...

[benhemp]

Partially answering my own question: I just found this article about its use for PMR:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

[SheffieldJane]

That is a first for me - interesting. I feel that I had it once for something else and couldn’t tolerate it. Many moons ago.

[PMRpro Ambassador]

It was approved as an orphan drug for Duchene muscular dystrophy: An orphan drug is a pharmaceutical agent developed to treat medical conditions which, because they are so rare, would not be profitable to produce without government assistance. The conditions are referred to as orphan diseases.

The price of deflazacort is about 7x that of prednisolone - multiply that by the number of patients who need it and it is a considerable increase in cost for some systems.

Did you see this study - linked at the side of the one you found?

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/852...

who say "The clinical control of muscle pain was significantly inferior in the deflazacort group from 6 weeks to 3 months. "

I suspect the increase cost isn't justified by the efficacy.