@jeff97 You can use that definition, I would not. The reason being is that the goal of prednisone and the drugs approved to treat PMR and GCA all are anti-inflammatories. This is because PMR and GCA put your body in what is medically referred to as a bi-directional inflammatory loop and what is called in computer programming as an infinite loop. It is the inflammation that is the source of pain. The goal of the medications is to reduce the inflammation and eliminate the pain. The core problem is that left uncontrolled the inflammation loop will self-generate more inflammation thus causing the person more pain.
There are multiple types of inflammation involved in the is loop. IL-6 is one of the big players. IL-6 is known to lay the groundwork for your body to generate MMP inflammation. The next step in the loop is MMP inflammation feeds the generation of TNF inflammation. Then TFN inflammation plays into the generation of IL-6 inflammation, thus closing the loop. Left unchecked it becomes a self-feeding loop creating more inflammation in your system.
This is why the goal should be to eliminate the pain and shut down the loop. The approach is about finding the lowest level of treatment needed to shut down the loop. The idea is the smaller the amount of meds needed, the higher the chance that PMR/GCA is going into remission.
I realize doctors don't tell you this, but it is clear to me if the meds they give you are strictly symptomatic anti-inflammatory treatments and they want you to taper off of them if the pain remains gone - what other explanation fits the treatment approach?
Details on the inflammatory bi-directional loop can be found by using an AI engine and/or simply entering "inflammatory bi-directional loop" in a google search.