Excellent question but I don't know what the best answer is! I attributed many things to PMR because I needed to justify taking more Prednisone to relieve the pain. The notion that the pain was caused by PMR was reinforced when the pain was relieved after I took Prednisone.

The problem is ... Prednisone is used to treat inflammation and not all inflammation is caused by PMR. Inflammation is the body's natural response to many conditions such as infections, trauma or simply from overused muscles. Not all inflammation is caused by PMR. Furthermore , PMR is just one of many autoimmune disorders.

There are better treatment options than Prednisone for other autoimmune disorders. The common belief is that Prednisone is the best treatment for PMR. However, maybe it isn't PMR or perhaps we have some other condition that isn't autoimmune related.

I think it all leads to a knee jerk reaction to take more Prednisone whenever we experience any kind of pain. One scenario is that we might take Prednisone when we have an infection or something like cancer. We suppress our immune systems by taking Prednisone when the inflammatory response is our defense for fighting an infection, repair trauma or stop cancer from spreading.

It doesn't help when non-medical professionals on the internet encourage us to take more Prednisone or tell us how to taper off prednisone. They don't have access to our medical records or the ability to order tests and procedures to determine what exactly is causing the pain. The same people say our doctors are ignorant because they don't know how to treat PMR. Well ... it might not be PMR.

It is no wonder doctors become impatient when we don't listen to their medical advice. I now realize how patient my rheumatologist was with me. Had I listened to the people on the internet, I would still be taking Prednisone for PMR and other conditions when there were better options that were available for me.

I remember my ophthalmologist cautioning me about taking Prednisone for uveitis which is a serious autoimmune disorder that causes inflammation inside the eye. Uveitis can cause vision loss if it isn't treated promptly after determining what is causing it. My eye would turn red and become inflamed whenever I had a flare of autoimmune uveitis and it was appropriate to take Prednisone.

There are other types of uveitis that are caused by an eye infection and also traumatic uveitis. My ophthalmologist said Prednisone would not be indicated and might do more harm than good. A dilated eye exam was the only way to know what was causing the uveitis. My ophthalmologist said I would have no way of knowing what type of uveitis it was but the symptoms would all be the same. Depending on the type of uveitis, an antibiotic might be the treatment if the uveitis was caused by an infection.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/14414-uveitis
"Uveitis can happen for many reasons. The most likely known causes include:
Infections.
Systemic causes.
Injuries.
Medications."
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By the way ... I think trigger fingers are associated more with inflammatory arthritis rather than PMR.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/trigger-finger/symptoms-causes/syc-20365100
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I had frequent trigger fingers when I was diagnosed with PMR. I was also diagnosed with reactive arthritis in addition to PMR. I'm a person with multiple autoimmune conditions. There isn't any rule that says you can only have one autoimmune condition. In fact, if you have one autoimmune condition, the risk of having other autoimmune conditions increases.