How long does it take for Prednisone to start working?

Hey Beth,

I went off asacol cold turkey on 9/7/07 and started 60mg pred the same day (medical reasons) and I went into a huge flare until I took cipro and hydrocortisone e's, two weeks later, I began to improve and went into remission. I started Imuran 11/07.

I tapered down to 5mg of pred end of April. 2nd week of May I took aspirin and flared (not sure if caused by aspirin or I failed imuran). I have been on 40mg of pred for almost a week now and am doing much better, not losing as much blood, getting formed bm's - sometimes, and urgency is better.

I guess I am trying to say that the first time, it took a while and the second time it did not, there are so many factors, which stinks, b/c I always want to know what to expect!!! I guess I am just glad it is helping.

HTH!

Within a few days for me. It'll take longer for total healing but you should feel the effects pretty quickly. Good luck

i was on 20 mg for almost 2 weeks for me to get back to normal and get the flare under control.  I would assume if you're on 40 you'll prob see results much more quickly!  Good luck!  Oh and I already had D so I don't know if pred caused it.  But I can tell you that from people I know that pred usually has the opposite effect on them. 

Thanks for all of the replies!  I really appreciate your thoughts and advice.

I am going into my fourth day of Pred.  I "feel" good, but that's never really been an issue for me.  The symptoms seem to be a little better, I guess. 

Anyway, I have been reading some of the posts and it looks like some people feel they do better on a lower dosage of Asacol, or whatever maintenance med they are taking. 

I am taking 3 Lialda, 1 Canasa, 40 mgs of Pred, and 50 mgs of Imuran.  I started the Imuran and the Pred at the same time, but I have been on the Lialda and Canasa since January.  The inflammation is limited to the left side of my colon and lower.  The doc said the biopsies from the rest of my colon didn't show any inflammation.

So, the point of my babbling is that I think I might see what happens if I only take 2 Lialda.  Maybe I am in a bit of an overload.  But, I want to be a good patient, and do what the doc says to do, you know?  But then again, they don't know EVERYTHING, and I am the one who has dealt with this for the last SEVEN years of my life!!!! 

Maybe I will give it another week with the 3 Lialda and the rest of the meds and see what happens.  Do you guys think that a person's size has anything to do with dosing?  I am 5 feet and weigh 110?  Probably not with the Lialda, though, because it's pretty much topical, right?  Since Pred is supposed to be the wonder drug, I'm not going to mess with the dosage of it or the Imuran.

The doc told me husband that I had severe inflammation.  So, it really doesn't seem to me that the Lialda was doing a whole lot.  Oh, well - just a thought.

Thanks for listening!

Beth

I took pred for the first time ever a few weeks ago. Surprisingly it wasn't for UC, I had a raging case of poison oak. I had a completely normal solid BM the very first day I took the pred, I was on 40mg for the first 5 days then tapered. I felt great the 3 weeks I was on it. I guess that's just long enough before the side effects start?

Prednisone always helped me within a few days. None of my meds have ever made things worse. I was on Asacol and started 125mg Imuran while I was on that (but not on Pred). Three weeks later I stopped the Asacol (I think I tapered). No problems an everything went great =)

For me, it started working within the first day I took it!
Sick, throwing up, bloody diarrhea in the morning, and in the evening I had no problems.

maud said...
ive been on prednisalone now or 3.5 weeks and still bleeding started at 6a day for a week and now on 3 a day, 3 more weeks left, any dvice is great
4 asacol a day also

My advice is, stop going down on the medication!
If the symptoms are still there, you shouldn't taper off it!
Talk to your doctor, about possibly raising your dosage, back to where it was before, then slowly taper off when things get better.

I too seem to have the same problem with prednisone. The first time I was put on it through IV in the hospital and continued it orally at home and it worked amazingly! Now that I am on my second flare which seems to be much worse, I am taking 60mg of prednisone orally compared to the 40mg I was taking the first flare and unfortunately it seems to be taking much longer to work. My physician explained to me that it's kind of like putting out a house fire with a spray bottle of water. It's one thing if you have one section of your colon affected but since I have my entire colon affected severely, it is going to take much longer which means I need to stay on high doses of steroids for longer periods of time which I'm not thrilled with but I guess I have no choice.

thanks all, i am not so sure why its not suiting me!

Hi guys. I've been showing UC symptoms since December 2010, it took almost a year for them to get round to my colonscopy and diagnosis. They put me on Pentasa at first, but once they realise that my disease was predominantly leftsided put me on a 4 Mezafant XL pills per day. I had nocturnal symptoms and up to and over 10 bloody BMs a day, so on December they started me on 40mg Prednisolone, tapering off by 5mg a week over the course of 8 weeks. My health really improved, although my mouth ulcers came back once I got below 15mg pred, and got me down to around 1/2 BMs a day, no blood. This lasted for a little over 2 months, now I'm flaring again and they've given me another 8 weeks on pred, starting at 40mg again. Started on my pred again on Saturday and felt much better (only 1 BM on Saturday, the same on Sunday!) However I drank a lot of alcohol and ate a lot this weekend, and now am worse than ever in terms of the blood. There is really a lot of blood coming out of me today (I'm at work aswell, which doesn't help).

So it's day three of Pred now and I'm pretty concerned that I'm still bleeding, and that this time I may not react well to the Pred. If you respond to it the first time will it always work for you, or does it not work like that? Should I be worried, or do you reckon it'll starting working in the next few days? I'm seeing my GI on Wednesday anyway to talk about azathioprine so hopefully I should be OK until then. Really worried though. Going to start eating sensibly again and pack in the booze for a while...

Hello all

I started on 40g pred 5 days ago and saw results straightaway. For me it was stomach ache that was unbearable and pred got rid of it. However, once I take it I become very light headed and not able to function as well. I usually take the pred in the morning after breakfast. What I find though is that the effects wear off in the evening and the light headiness goes and is replaced by stomach ache. Anybody had a similar experience?

Thank you