Important Prednisone Question

I have been on prednisone 60 mg for 9 days and I basically no response and will be tapering to 50mg starting tomorrow. Has anyone taken very very long to respond to prednisone? How long did it take you? Is it hopeless for me or might I still show improvements as I taper down?

9 days?! You are tougher than me! I tried prednisone at 60mg as a last ditch effort praying it would give me ANY relief. After three days I said screw it and started my quick taper off of it. Prednisone never worked for me. I was on it for almost 10 consecutive months. Every time I decided to get off of it (worried about bones, though I only had excess hair growth as a side effect and no help for my UC) I saw a new doctor and they put me back on. ugh. My DEXA scan came back good though! And no other issues from long term use. Not until I received IV steroids during a hospitalization, did prednisone start to work for me. Or maybe it was the IV steroids still in my veins. I was a happy girl for almost two weeks after that hospital stay. And everything has gone to sh!t since.
I feel like if prednisone is going to work for you... you'll get results... quick.

When I got no results after a week when I was first diagnosed I told my doc something was wrong, I wasnt responding... she didn't seem alarmed. A year later, I'm evicting me colon... so... yeah.

i was started on prednisone 40mg orally, didn't feel any response, but my doctor told me that sometimes it takes weeks for people to respond. i ended up having to be hospitalized and they increased the dosage and gave me IV steroids instead which they said would help, but my body didnt respond to those either. guess my immune system is just TOO strong! pfft :). i'm now back on oral pred as i taper down. can't wait to get off this stuff as it's making me go crazy. it sucks because the pred is not giving me any relief from my UC but IS giving me side effects.

anyway, i think the doctor was right in keeping me on the pred and hoping it would kick in because he was trying to avoid the big pharma stuff/surgery at all costs... unfortunately my body just doesn't respond to steroids so now i have begun remicade treatments.

i'm guessing that if you are already beginning to taper, you won't see improvement from the pred since it hasn't worked at higher dosages. but i could be wrong! i do hope it helps for you... keep us updated!

I'm still confused on how prednisone works. It seems to be one of two things. Is the prednisone suppressing the immune system from doing its inflammatory response? Or is the immune system doing the inflammatory response and then the prednisone goes in and removes the inflammation and the body goes and produces the inflammation and the next day the prednisone removes it again and the cycle continues? If it is the latter, how often does the body keep attacking the colon (not sure if anyone knows) - is it like a daily basis? an hourly basis? a weekly basis?

Hey pmitra - Yes, Prednisone is interfering with your body's ability to mount an inflammatory response in the first place. Not the other scenario you mentioned.

Well - actually that's not 100% true - in a round about way you could say it goes in after and cleans up based on an allergic type response by promoting tolerance.

In any case, just think of it like it's saying NO - don't inflame. So suppressing.

Hope that makes sense to you.

EDIT: I'm the same as Baggravation above where I start at 40mg and feel great, but once I taper to 20 mg I start to really feel ill again. The last time I took a course I noticed it took a few days longer than usual for it to really start working. So for me that was about a week. Maybe see how you are after 2 weeks and see if there's at least a noticeable improvement.

Post Edited (Canada Mark) : 6/12/2014 12:03:43 AM (GMT-6)