Uceris - do you take it with or without food?

The prescribing info for uceris says it can be taken with or without food. The only rule seems to be to take it in the morning. Which confuses me a little bit since I thought uceris is an extended release tablet, ie. one of those medications that doesn't start dissolving immediately like Lialda or Asacol. I also take Lialda and for that, it clearly says to take with food which for me makes sense; if the pill is meant to dissolve in a certain condition then you want to make sure the body is in a certain state whether the pills travel with or without food down your body.

This is my first time taking uceris (9mg). I recently developed another flareup and was put on 40mg prednisone for 5 days to kick things into gear and have been on uceris for a week now. Unfortunately the uceris doesn't seem to be doing much for me and I'm slowly regressing back. I've seen some people saying it took a while for uceris to kick in so I wanted to make sure I was giving the drug the best shot before I gave up and went back to prednisone. The first couple of days I took it 10-15minutes after having a light breakfast. Just today, I took it on an empty stomach right after getting up and waited 30 minutes before I had something for breakfast, to see if that might make a difference. But that didn't make a noticeable difference.

So for those that had success with Uceris did you take it on a full stomach right after some breakfast? Or did you do something different?

notsosicklygirl said...
I've been taking it in the evening. It's definitely helping me.

really? that's surprising. "Take UCERIS in the morning." was the one hard rule I saw about how to take uceris (well actually that and making sure you don't eat or drink grapefruit because that inteferes with the drug absorption somehow). When you take it in the evening, do you do it on an empty stomach before bed or right after dinner?

Usually steroids are taken in the morning to lessen sleep disruption. I think the 'extended release' in the case of Uceris means that it makes it further through your intestines before the coating wears down and the drug is released, and maybe not so much that it keeps releasing over a longer time.

I took budesonide in the morning, just a little bit before breakfast.