Prednisolone out of date

[caftan]

I realised yesterday that all my prednisolone is out of date by at least several months. Because I already had quite a lot of pred in 1mg 5 mg and 2 and a half mg I have not been ordering any more. I decided to speak with my pharmacist this morning and he told me to put in another order for pred and to take old the out of date packets back to the pharmacy. He also said that it loses it's efficacy over time. Oh dear. I've been taking out of date pred for some time now and am wondering if this could be the reason for feeling under par for quite a while now, in fact since I started to taper back down from 15 mg per day following a flare several months ago. I am still struggling on 9 and a half mg per day. I was previously taking 4 and half mg per day before the flare for about 3 months and was feeling OK so it's been quite a setback. I wonder if PMR Pro and Dorset Lady could advise please?

[PMRpro Ambassador]

I don't think it will have made 5mg/50% difference - I think you may have to accept that that flare was the sort that was due to an increase in the disease activity rather than having overshot the dose you need a bit. That means that maybe 10mg is what you need at present.

Pred that is out of date will lose a bit of its power but it doesn't suddenly self-destruct overnight, just very slowly goes off and studies have shown it can still be perfectly OK after years if stored properly,

Just get up-to-date tablets and keep an eye on the use-by date. We've probably all done it.

[DorsetLady PMRGCAuk volunteer]

Ditto to PMRpro’s comments ….

[piglette]

Most drugs last quite a long time after the out of date suggests. It really depends how you have been storing them too. If they have been in a dark, cool drawer they will last a lot longer than if they have been sitting on the window sill in the sun!

[Twopies]

I read a study where they tested prednisone after 2 years and found it was still effective. The study of course didn’t recommend that you take meds that out of date, it just pointed out it hadn’t lost any potency.

[caftan in reply to Twopies]

that’s interesting, thank you!