New guy - needing to make a decision

Humira is a very different medicine than prednisone, so you shouldn't be comparing the two as such. You don't get annoying side effects with Humira. Humira and other biologics (e.g., Remicade) have only statistically rare side effects, but very serious ones. I recommend you read Balancing the Risks and Benefits of Treatment for Inflammatory Bowel Disease by the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America:

http://www.ccfa.org/assets/pdfs/risk-and-benefits-transcript.pdf

It talks about the statistical odds of getting side effects from Biologic or ANTI-TNF medicines, such as Humira.

Unfortunately, it's kind of a roll of the dice. Prednisone has guaranteed definite side effects short term and if on it too long it will destroy your body in numerous ways, guaranteed. Prednisone usually works quite well and can get you out of a flare and then hopefully resume a maintenance therapy such as you did before.

Humira has less hopeful remission statistics than prednisone. There is a fair chance you won't suffer significant side effects either short term or long term, however, it can have bad life threatening side effects in a select few.

If I were in your shoes I would try going down the same road you did before and hope that it worked again. If not then you may have to think about a different game plan such as Humira.

This is going to sound unconventional, but you need to think outside the box here. I'm not going to dissuade you from taking biologics but you need to be made aware of the correct information on these class of drugs. What the CCFA says about them is irrelevant since abbott (humira) and jansen (remicade) are sponsors. Anytime there is a conflict of interest, you need to look for independent, peer-reviewed studies to see the real efficacy rates. The science for anti-TNF blockers is there, but it's weak. The efficacy rates of these drugs are dismal at best:

"Results from both studies showed 16.5% to 18.5% of patients treated with Humira achieved clinical remission compared with 9.2% to 9.3% of patients receiving placebo," according to the FDA's announcement.

"Additionally, in the second study, 8.5% of patients treated with Humira sustained clinical remission compared with 4.1% of patients treated with placebo."

Anytime a drug is slightly more effective than the placebo, most doctors will push it on the general population without looking at alternatives. Don't be fooled by the "low" adverse reaction profile, biologics are black boxed for a reason. The statistics on adverse reactions are cooked by the companies and unreported by the general population. This is due to the FDAs faulty adverse event reporting system - 95% of these adverse incidents go unreported. Even if they are reported, it takes 5-10 years and multiple lawsuits for the FDA to change something.

I encourage you to explore other options like diet modifications, LDN before making a decision. Get to the root cause of the issue.

Post Edited (StealthGuardian) : 10/15/2013 1:40:58 PM (GMT-6)

Keep in mind, Humira takes about 2 weeks to kick in as well, so you will need to continue on the prednisone. I started Humira last week, haven't regretted it yet.