Tapering off prednisone

Currently I'm taking asacol, 6 800 mg pills a day. It isn't working for me so my GI is considering putting me back on prednisone since I was on it before and it worked.

The only problem I have is that the second I was off my symptoms returned right away, a little worse then before. I started on 40 mg a day, dropping 5 mg a week. Once I'd reached 25 mg, I had to take 5 mg less everyday.

I'm just wondering if I was going down to fast once I'd reached 25 mg, because it seemed like a big jump for me to go down from 5 mg a week to 5 a day and if that's why my symptoms returned so fast?

5mg a day is fast, it might be worth going back on and finding a maintenance drug that works before you are tapered off.

Good luck

Milky: There is one thing you should realize about pred if you don't already know. Prednisone is not a cure. Your problem is that your immune system is attacking your colon or something in your colon, causing inflammation. Prednisone weakens your immune system so that your body does not do that attacking anymore, giving your colon time to heal. The bad thing is that pred only works while you are taking it and that's it. Once you taper down or off your immune system will go on the attack all over again, causing another flare. The length of time until your next flare is determined by how much your colon was healed in the first place. If it was not healed well then you could relapse very quickly. If your colon was completely healed it could take a few months until relapse. Very few people go into remission on prednisone alone after they have tapered off. The goal is to take another med (such as Asacol) in conjunction with the pred so that when you taper the pred down and off the other med (such as Asacol) will keep you in remission. That should be the game plan but if Asacol does not work on you then you need something else for your remission med. If you are relying on the pred to keep you in remission it will not unless you continue taking it forever, which is a bad idea.

even though the it is not perfect science.... i think it is quite indicative that your colon hasn't well enough for you to go for a aggressive taper down...and you maintenance medication has not latched on to control the disease into sustained remission.

way too fast on the taper, you were tapering off 20% 25% 33% daily, that's absurd

notsosicklygirl said...
I think the reason symptoms come back when you taper off is because you're not on a medication that is managing your symptoms. Some people are able to manage with Asacol alone, mild and moderate cases perhaps, but in my case, I have moderate and I was unable to taper off prednisone with Asacol and rectals and I had to start 6mp. Since, I've been doing much better and I've been off pred for quite a while at this point - years.

You may also want to try some alternative options like diet if you think that might help. It never helped me but many people have success.

I've tried different diets and it doesn't really help. Sometimes for a few days, but in the long run it doesn't really make a difference.