Newbie - Mesalamines haven't worked...what else?

Hello everyone,

 

I am new to this forum.  I am looking for answers.  I was diagnosed a little over a year ago with UC.  I have been hospitalized once and treated intravenously with Prednisone.  I was severely dehydrated and malnourished.  I am Celiac as well.  I have been on 5 different brands of mesalamine; Asacole, Canasa (suppository), Lialda and Penasa.  All they seem to do is make my hair fall out.  They don't help me, only the Prednisone seems to help.  Once I am weaned off Prednisone, I fall right back into a flare up.  I just can't live on high doses of Prednisone my whole life.  Help me!

The mesalamines can work better sometimes in conjunction with something else. There was study by some big drs at Mount Sinai in NYC (I'm pretty sure) that showed that the oral mesalamine in conjunction with rectal meds were way more effective.

I know you said you tried Canasa suppositories. HAve you tried any other rectal meds? The ones with steroids are good to try as a step before going back to Prednisone. The dose of steroids that's absorbed by the body is a lot less.

I would definitley check out that link to the CCFA website. They have a good section about different medicines.

It takes a while to find what will work for you. Hang in and I'm sure you'll get a lot of good advice from this board.

I was diagnosed around 6 months ago, so I'm fairly new to the disease also. But I've found that probiotics help a lot to reduce the symptoms, if you find the right one. I first tried primal defense which did nothing, but all the other one's I've used at least help. I'm only using probiotics right now, asacol didn't do much for me either. And prednisone works, but I don't like the idea of using it long term. And probiotics may work for one person, and not another, so try different kinds if it doesn't work at first. I have noticed that probiotics that have lactobacillus acidophilus, and bifidobacteria infantis work pretty well for me. I am using align, which has a certain kind of bifidobacteria infantis, and just generic walgreens brand probiotics that has lactobacillus acidophilus and a bifidobacteria strain, it has 20 billion strains per capsule. I have also found the the one's that have high amounts of strains per capsule work better. Like I said, try different kinds out to see what may or may not work, and you may find one that gets the job done.