Hi everyone
Just a quick question. I am now at the end of 3 weeks on 12.5mg prednisolone and my GP wants me to reduce now to 10mg. Is this a normal reduction? Had no problems whatsoever reducing from 15mg to 12.5mg. GP wants me to stay at 10mg for 4-6 weeks before then reducing by 1mg per month. Should I just go straight on to the 10mg daily or do a taper over a few weeks? Any thoughts would be helpful.
It is a standard reduction step - whether it works for you will depend on a few factors, not least that it is still enough to manage your level of inflammation but you can'ttell that in advance. It tends to be greater in the early days of PMR. The only way to find out is to try - but don't try to tough it out if you get PMR symptoms back and they get worse over a few days rather than better.
We would always support the use of one of the slowed tapers we bang on about, they do make it more comfortable doing the change in dose so it is easier to say whether any discomfort is the PMR or because of a relatively big change in dose all at once.
Thank you for your quick reply. I think that I will try initially to go straight to 10mg and see how I am. I suppose I could try 11.25mg if I start getting pain again. Just want to reduce as quickly as possible without experiencing pain.
We all do - but remember the pred has cured nothing, it is a management strategy to allow a better quality of life until the underlying autoimmune cause of the symptoms burns out and goes into remission.
You aren't reducing relentlessly to zero, you are tapering or titrating the dose to find the lowest effective dose for YOUR PMR at this particular time. That will vary from person to person and over time. There is no fixed end point to pred for PMR - it may be a year (for a small minority) or it may be several years and there is no way to forecast where on that range you are. Not even a dramatic response to a low dose of pred means anything - I got a superb change in the symptoms less than 6 hours after taking my first dose. But it took me over 4 years to get reliably below 10mg for any length of time.And by then I had had PMR for 9 years - did the 5 years undiagnosed have an effect?
I entirely understand what you are saying so thinking that I will try DL taper down to 10mg and see how I go. Hopefully everything will go well but will report back in a few weeks.
Hi, I found 15 mg to 12.5 mg challenging, but barely registered 12.5 mg to 10 mg drop. I was on each dose for 3 weeks and then 4 weeks on 10 mg. We are all different, so who knows how you will feel, but doing a slower taper is likely to be less brutal as a rule. Good luck.
Thank you for replying. As I said previously think that I will start reducing to 10mg this week on DL taper plan. I may start the taper from week 2 (3 days at new dose) and see how I go. Fingers crossed everything will be okay
Hi, I went from 12.5 to 10 in November and was fine. From 10mg I go down in 1 mg every month am on 8mg now. Struggled more from 10mg to 8mg than from 12.5 to 10
That's good to know. My GP wants me to follow this reduction but says to stay at 10mg for 4-6 weeks before reducing 1mg per month. Fingers crossed everything will be fine
I've always found 2.5 drop too much, but if you have 5s, 2.5s and 1s at your disposal, you can do drops as miniscule as you like.
Been fine on 12.5mg. Only got 5s and 2.5s at the moment but GP said would prescribe 1s when required. Want to try to get to 10mg in the coming month and can always cut 2.5 if I have problems. Starting to taper this week. Fingers crossed.
And toes as well! Hope you make it!
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