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Better to be in some pain or better to up the dose of prednisone?

Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR) | Last Active: Apr 13 9:13am | Replies (36)
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@gmdb

Unfortunately even this fairly safe approach can often fail as we have no way of truly measuring whether remission is occurring. Even if the CRP/ESR drop back to normal (as mine have been on many occasions) it can only mean that the current dose of steroids is the correct dose to control the current level of PMR inflammation. As soon as you drop by even 0.5 mg, the symptoms will return if the level of PMR inflammation then exceeds the steroid dose.

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Replies to "Unfortunately even this fairly safe approach can often fail as we have no way of truly..."
art43 | @art43 | Apr 11 9:30am

So, let’s say “remission” is the situation where you can drop a level without experiencing PMR pain. Perhaps “control” would be a better term. My rheumy used “remission” after I went from 30 to 10 over a 3-month period while experiencing zero pain. My inflammatory markets were then normal. I then went from 10 to 5 at 1 per month with occasional transient non-PMR pains, and then to zero at 0.5 per month, again with only non-PMR issues.

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