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Prednisone to Kevzara

Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR) | Last Active: Jun 18 11:39am | Replies (31)

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@tuckerp

Remember Kevzara is trying to control the PMR restart or flare caused by the taper of the prednisone. Many on this site have said it doesnt help. It wont help unless its a true PMR. The level of pain your feeling is most likely from the taper. The lack of cortisol causes the pain. So you may not necessarily feel any help from the drug.

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Replies to "Remember Kevzara is trying to control the PMR restart or flare caused by the taper of..."

I pray it works for me! Thank you.

I think there are many possibilities including a low cortisol level that might explain pain on lower doses of prednisone. A low cortisol level may only explain a portion of what is causing the pain.

1) Many people discover their osteoarthritis pain gets worse on lower doses of prednisone. Kevzara might not help osteoarthritis.

2) While PMR pain should be controlled with Kevzara ... PMR might be still be active to a certain degree. Symptoms rule in this regard because inflammation markers are no longer reliable because of how Kevzara works. IL-6 levels will initially skyrocket in the blood but that doesn't mean all IL-6 receptors are blocked. Some inflammation can still happen.

3) A person might not have PMR only. My case is an example. I had a long history of reactive arthritis which didn't go away after PMR was diagnosed. I wasn't having any PMR pain after I tapered to zero prednisone the first time. Actemra was clearly controlling my PMR pain. However, injections of Actemra every two weeks didn't prevent a flare of uveitis from happening even though Actemra was working well for PMR. That saga is another long story but ultimately increasing my Actemra injections to weekly was better and a monthly infusion of Actemra has worked the best.

4) It could be prednisone withdrawal symptoms as compared to adrenal insufficiency. One is more temporary while the other may be permanent. or at least take longer to resolve.

5) It could be any combination of the above things or something else entirely.