I was approved yesterday to start an infusion of ACTEMRA. The Rheumy is starting me on 500 mg. How much will this reduce my prednisone? I have suspected GCA with PMR. I have a trip planned in August to Ireland but will not be back by my infusion date. What will happen? Will I have to take more prednisone since I won’t have access to the ACTEMRA?
Since I did not start it yet should I push the date out to day of the week it would work for my trip?
Thank you for any experiences or thoughts.
I reduced my prednisone dose to 0 after 7 months of Actemra. I was on 35 mg when I started. I’m going on a trip overseas in 2 weeks and I will also miss my infusion time by 1 week. I told my rheumatologist and he said I should be fine. I sure hope so
It doesn't work like that - it takes time to start to act and must be repeated - in your case with an infusion, monthly - ongoing. I use weekly pre-prepared injections which are fixed at 162mg and my rheumatologist said to wait at least a couple of months for them to start acting well before starting to reduce slowly. It isn't a case of you have the infusion and can just reduce the pred dose by x amount. You still have to taper it slowly because everyone is different. With GCA about half of patients still require some pred, commonly about 8-10mg because the production of IL-6 which is what Actemra works on is only one of at least 3 different mechanisms involved in GCA. I have reduced from 19mg to 8mg in 6 months.
thank you. So if I get the infusion 5 days late what will happen? If you kniw
Great information. Thank you!
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