How long did it take for budesonide/Entocort/Uceris to work for you?

Have just started 9mg Entocort. Am on day 2 and it seems to have done crap all so far. I'm used to pred working like lightning in the past, so I'm a bit anxious this will never work. On the other hand I think my disease is different now to what it was before - more proctitis-ey, less systemic.

I'm unusual in that I very rarely have blood and loose stools are my default, so the only real measure of progress I have to go on is urgency. The urgency is what most drives me round the bend, though - it's debilitating and it's frequent. I just want it to piss off.

So, how long should I give it to work, folks?

I am just finishing up Week 4 of Uceris. My symptoms were pretty minor; moderate urgency, gas and occasional "gas pain." But colonoscopy showed somewhat significant inflammation in the transverse and right side, so my GI prescribed this.

After a week I noticed that the gas and gas pains had lessened, and I was just realizing the last day or two that the urgency (which wasn't horrible to begin with) has pretty much gone.

As Rocker said, it's a slow-acting med, and rather than a dramatic, "There! That's fixed!" I have been noticing, "Oh, yeah, that IS better than it was...." gradually.

What is great is that I am hardly noticing any side effects. I developed a bad taste in my mouth about 3 days ago, and maybe I am having some mood swings (or maybe that is what is going on in my life! - I'll start my own post in regard to all this.) To me the lack of side effects is worth the slow action of the med!

I really hope you have good luck!

😜

The best thing to treat urgency is rectals, I know that you tried that but they do work if you can do them.... I know that you recently tied them but maybe it worth a try again, especially if you to travel.

Oral steroids never really fixed my flares, they only made them marginally better. I managed for years on rectals.

*sigh* I was hoping I would be able to avoid the rectal med conversation, but here we go... (again).

I used to be severely intolerant to oral mesalazine. My GI waved that aside and prescribed me 2mg mesalazine enemas and 1mg mesalazine suppositories. I tried the suppositories first of all to see how I got on with them - the answer was 'not very well'. I wasn't as sick as I was in the past, but I had a definite reaction and they caused bleeding. My GI waved that aside as well and tried to persuade me to try the enemas but it was no good: I wasn't prepared to try mesalazine again in any form after that. Particularly as there is some evidence available that mesalazine actually causes inflammation in the mesalazine-intolerant population (obviously people who are not intolerant don't have to worry about that.)

Next step was predfoam. Tried that for about 8 or 9 days. I didn't have a bad reaction, but the 4" rigid nozzles were horrible to insert - I struggled with it every day. I stopped after a while, as the predfoam didn't seem to be making that much difference anyway. To be fair I was only taking one a day, so only half the maximum dose - it might have made more difference if I had taken two a day but I couldn't face that.

I'm done with rectal meds permanently. I don't want to discourage anyone else from taking them, but they're not for me.

Edit: Sorry nssg, your post wasn't there before I posted! I tried rectal prednisolone - each dose was 20mg.

It just occurred to me that Uceris is designed to release at a certain ph level in the colon and you may be too acidic for it to ever release since you don't have a colon. You need something that would release in the small intestine.

CCinPA - That's a really good point. For reasons I still don't understand the pharmacist decided to change my original Entocort prescription to a modified release one (after clearing it with the GP first). I was dubious but thought it might be okay, as all my disease is lower down - it's at the end of the small bowel and in the rectum. I'm not passing capsules in the toilet but I still wonder if I am really absorbing this stuff.

Time to message my IBD nurse methinks.

Edit: Oh doggy do's, I missed your second post :-/ All I can tell you there's one version where you take 3 pills 1x a day and another version where you take 1 pill 3x a day. I'm taking the first version at the moment.

My understanding is that Uceris is more for UC as it releases in the colon and endocort is for crohn's or right sided UC because it releases farther up. Before uceris was on the market, I asked if I could try entocort and my GI said it wouldn't work on me.

Uceris takes awhile to work. If you are in need of immediate relief you may need to ask for pred.

Uceris worked within three days for me.