PMR and methotrexate

Oh my! I have to admit this all sounds a little crazy. If they put you on 30 mg of met of Prednisone in March, it would be inconceivable for you to be down to 7 mg today. That is a precipitous decline and would have all kinds of negative effects purely related to spiraling off of prednisone.

How old are you? Many docs think we are too young for PMR but that is because they don't understand that there are many folks will get PMR under the age of 60. And if someone is 59 or younger, they simply concluded something else without ever bothering to read current literature which suggests otherwise.

By the way, after I read about the side effects of methotrexate and particularly it's effect on the liver, I stopped it immediately. If you're already showing a reaction in your liver, I might advise the same. I'm not a doctor, But liver issues are a big deal

You did mean March 2016?  In that case your reduction has, as the others said, been much too fast.  I also agree that if you only started treatment nine months ago unless you had been unable to tolerate pred for some reason there should not yet be any question of putting you on other drugs for PMR, although mtx is used for RA.  Now it is possible the drug your doctor is suggesting is tocilizumab which has been approved for use with RA and also is proving effective in treating GCA, which as you know is so closely related to PMR it is considered to be a different manifestation of the same disease.  If this is the medication you may have a chance to try, and if you have some sort of drug coverage so you do not have to pay (it costs thousands $$ a year) then you are probably very lucky.  Another lady in Australia has been posting on this forum and she had her diagnosis changed to RA after some time on pred for PMR but not doing well.  She had to take another drug for a couple of months, which did not work, and because it did not work she is now allowed to try tocilizumab and last report from her is that she feels better than she has for ages, so that's very encouraging, although still early days in the treatment.

If you had PMR, being on steroids would have sorted the pain and stiffness within 24 hours and it seems crazy that your doctor had put you on 30mg to start and also very strange why he put you on methaxathrate so soon. and seems youve had no benefits feom the pred. What age are you? Alot ofndoctors think yiu shoukd be ober 60 and probably closer to 79, I am 54 (diiagnosed in April). The biological drug he's putting you on is probably Embrel, it's hugely expensive, in Ireland it costs €1200 per month. It is prescribed for Rumathoid Arthritis and apparently when it works, it works really well but with your symptoms and scans not showing joints issues, it's very strange he's following that line. To be honest I would be getting a second opinion. He's messing you about with medications that have huge side effects and talking about starting you on Embrel also without any backup to his reasoning. There's no harm getting a second opinion, you need to get some proper answers at this stage, you're 8 months in and still no answers! Wishing you all the best in this and hope you get to the bottom of it all soon!

Sorry but I'm confused by " he believes its RA as clerly symptons are in my muscles and not joints" - PMR predominantly affects muscles and not joints although you can have synovitis and tendonitis, on the other hand, RA affects joints. So which do YOU have problems with? And did pred at 30mg give you a massive improvement in symptoms in a week or less?

However - it sounds more to me as if he believed from the start you have RA and is working through the protocol to allow you to start on a biologic drug - most countries stipulate that, to have the cost of biologics covered you have to start with the usual DMARDs (methotrexate, azathioprine and so on) and fail them for some reason or other such as side effects or they don't work. Only then can they progress to the far more expensive biologics. 

PMR and Late Onset RA (and other forms of inflammatory arthritis) can present identically - some will respond a bit to pred but not usually in the way PMR does. But without knowing more about your age and your symptoms it is impossible to express any opinion.