Prednisone long term use and adrenal insuffiency
Posted , 8 users are following.
After long term pred use i am now seeing my first known major prednisone side effect other
than weight gain ,skin bruising etc.
A couple of years ago i had a major flare and with a few hiccups it has taken me about
18 months to get under 7 Mg daily. At 6 1/2 Mg i started to feel unwell, so upped the dose
to 7 Mg
This seemed to clear things up but lowering to 6 1/2 , again i was unwell. I see sawed the dose for some time before seeing my GP, who said she suspected my adrenal glands were lazy , if not completely wrecked.........
Recently i had a tummy X ray and CT scan for an unrelated problem.
Amongst the report was a reference to my adrenal glands that said............
Both adrenal glands are moderately to severely hypoplastic.......
My GP explained this by saying your adrenal glands are stuffed through
long term prednisone use............
So now i have to take for life , a dose that keeps me feeling ok........
This i have to determine myself and for a start have settled on 7 Mg.
At this dose the PMR will , hopefully , look after itself.
Maybe if i had persevered with lower doses for shorter times ,things
may have turned out different , who knows...................
Yeah , so that is where things are at the moment, time will tell...........
1 like, 21 replies
pam36 BillyP
Edited
I think im a very similar situation to you. I have been on pred since 2009 and am unable to rid the pain. So I have now decided to up my dose by 1 mg a week until i feel better. Decided I will control this myself.
Anhaga pam36
Edited
It may be better to zap the pain with an increase of 5 mg (or slightly more depending what your current dose is, how bad the pain is and how long you've had it) and then carefully step down to find the lowest dose which will work. undoubtedly somewhat higher than where you are now. That's the standard increase we recommend. Stay at the effective increased dose for a week or so to make sure all the built up inflammation is dealt with.
BillyP pam36
Posted
GDay Pam,......On the odd occasion that i see my rheumy, he just says, you know how
you feel, so adjust your dose to suit yourself.
So unless it is something new to me i just do that...........
BillyP
Edited
Pam ,But.....in saying that.......Anhaga has some good advise.
Not much point in slowly raising the dose to try and find a better
level.
That just does not work..........it needs a bit of a kick to get the
inflamation under controll...............then drop back to your
desired level and gauge it from there..............
Anhaga BillyP
Posted
Exactly. A short spell on a higher dose may in fact mean less total intake of pred than slowly increasing to find best dose. 😃