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Wrist and finger pain while tapering prednisone
Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR) | Last Active: Nov 25 11:36am | Replies (35)Comment receiving replies
Thanks, Mike... I appreciate the help. I get the trigger fingers frequently, and terrible wrist pain. What biologic are you taking? My rheumatologist at the VA has told me she wants to put me on some new drug that will replace the prednisone. A buddy of mine is on Embrel, for his autoimmune issues. He says that works for him.. I think Embrel is an injection. Thanks for your help.
Replies to "Thanks, Mike... I appreciate the help. I get the trigger fingers frequently, and terrible wrist pain...."
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@murphy2370
Hi Jim ... we have the VA in common. The VA was able to get Actemra (tocilizumab) approved for me to treat PMR. That was when I was able to get off Prednisone the first time.
The first time I tapered off Prednisone, I had a flare of another autoimmune disease unrelated to PMR. An ophthalmologist at the VA insisted that Actemra be stopped and switched me to Humira. Along with Humira, 60 mg of Prednisone was restarted.
Humira probably helped the autoimmune condition that caused my eye to flare up. However, Humira didn't control PMR very well when I tried to taper off Prednisone again. I had recurring PMR symptoms when I reached 15 mg of Prednisone.
Multiple autoimmune conditions can be difficult to treat. Eventually I was switched back to Actemra by my rhematologist. I was able to discontinue Prednisone a second time. My ophthalmologist was opposed to switching me back to Actemra. However, now my ophthalmologist says Actemra "seems to work" for the autoimmune condition that caused uveitis to flare up.
https://preventblindness.org/uveitis/
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I have a type of inflammatory arthritis that is associated with uveitis. TNF inhibitors like Enbrel and Humira usually work better than IL-6 inhibitors like Actemra which only targeted PMR. I needed to be on either a TNF inhibitor or an IL-6 blocker but not both.
Some of my trigger fingers and other hand and wrist problems were attributed to inflammatory arthritis more than PMR. The tendon that ruptured was thought to have be the result of long term prednisione use but that was never confirmed so that was simply called a "spontaneous" tendon rupture.