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How long until higher dose of prednisone works?

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Ulcerative Colitis
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Posted 4/8/2012 3:17 PM (GMT 0)
I started out on 20mg of prednisone, apriso, and a daily mesalamine enema. After weeks of this my proctitis didn't get any better so I started tapering off the pred, and stopped taking the apriso and the enemas since they weren't doing anything. The only symptom I had was blood in my stool. After stopping the meds I started getting the cramps, urgency, waking in the middle of the night, all of which never happened before. Since then I have gone up to 40mg a day of pred since the new doc thought maybe the 20mg a day wasn't enough. I've also started taking the enemas again. It's been 5 days on the higher dose of pred and there is less bleeding and urgency, but it is still there. So it seems to be getting better. I was just wondering if anyone had this experience before with needing more pred, and if so, how long it takes for it to start really getting better? Been dealing with this darn proctitis for 4 months now. I know that's not long at all compared to most, but I'm already tired of it and ready for it to go away, ( for a while at least).
Posted 4/8/2012 3:26 PM (GMT 0)
Be patient. When I took pred to calm a flare I stayed at 60 mg/day for 3 weeks before tapering. You really want to get that monster under control. You're doing the right thing by using the enemas, too. They will help, just not as fast as the pred.
Posted 4/8/2012 3:36 PM (GMT 0)
BEEN ON PRED FOR 20DAYS AND I NEED MORE TIME FOR APPARENTLY ., SO I GUESS IT CAN TAKE TIME.  PS ANY ADVICE FOR URGENCY ? MINE IS BAD. AND I ALSO HAD TO GO FROM 20 MG TO 40MG
Posted 4/8/2012 4:40 PM (GMT 0)
I never had any problems with urgency until very recently and they only seemed to be in the morning when I first woke up. I would have to go multiple times in a short period of time. But since the higher dose of pred, the urgency has subsided quite a bit. If anything, I'll feel the cramps and then they'll go away within a minute and I'm fine.
Posted 4/8/2012 7:08 PM (GMT 0)
Well, this is a trick question because I've seen people have situations where prednisone doesn't help at all, even if they give it a good amount of time so there is no telling how long it can take. What I can tell you, is that in my experience, my first stint with pred I stated at 40mg and my symptoms were wiped away nearly over night. I was on 40 for a week and tapered to 30mg, all the want to 2.5mg. At 2.5mg, I had an awful relapse. I tried to go back up to 15mg but it didn't help at all. Finally, I had to go back up t0 40mg, this time 40mg didn't work so quickly. So what I am saying is, from my experience, it seems like when you're on prednisone, it's more difficult to get into remission from increasing the dose. Give it some time and try to be patient and you will being to heal. You do need to formulate a plan for using maintenance medication to help your proctitis from returning. I would try Rowasa if you can tolerate mesalamine.
Posted 4/8/2012 7:27 PM (GMT 0)
20 mgs is not enough to do much (in fact, it's the dose at which some people's symptoms start to return as they're tapering off of it), but 40 mgs should do you. Different people take different amounts of time to respond to the drug... many people respond very quickly (within a week), but I'm one who takes longer. This is my third round of prednisone in a year, and I usually take about three weeks at 40 mgs before I start to see significant improvement. Feel free to click on my link below if you want to read about my experiences with pred (I have a whole post dedicated to it). Hang in there, the pred is a pretty crummy drug to be on (awful side-effects), but it WILL work. Good luck!
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