Can ultrasound help confirm PMR diagnosis?

Posted by spiker @spiker, Jan 30 2:37pm

Diagnosed with PMR Jan 2024. Did the 20 mg prednisone to start, tapered down to 7.5 by August when symptoms returned. Back up to 20 mg prednisone and added leflunomide. Tapered down again when severe flare started a month ago. Tried to tough it out, but can’t. Back up to 10 mg prednisone, but it’s not helping. Stopped the leflunomide I keep reading about ultrasound as a way to confirm PMR. Has anyone had it done? All of the above is at the direction of my rheumatologist, but he poo-pooed the US..

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pmrsuzie | @pmrsuzie | 5 days ago

For what it's worth, in 6 years I have never had to increase my prednisone to more than 10 mg with some sort of flare - started at 20mg. I now seem to be stuck at getting below 5mg, am now at 4mg. However, I have never had the recurrence of the full blown initial symptoms and highly elevated markers. I read a study that divided pmr patients into subsets based on their disease progression and response. It's an old study 1999, the objective being to determine whether clinical or laboratory parameters in PMR could be identified that allow for stratifying patients into subsets with differences in corticosteroid requirements.