Prednisone and osteopenia how to control

Thanks John. I'm always cautious when taking a new medication because of interactions with the other drugs. Looking up the interactions of Hydroxychloroquine with other drugs I saw that Calcium D3 was listed. I was advised to take that several months ago. I can see how things can get very confusing when you deal with two different specialists (oncology and rheumatology) and the drugs they prescribe. I think that now things are easing up with the Covid it would be a good time to make an in person visit with my doctors to get better information.

I have had PMR for more than a year and a half. It took ~ 6 months to get diagnosed (because I was slightly under age 50). My current rheumatologist finally put me on 20 mg pred which finally helped and I've been trying to taper but am back up to 10 mg. He now has me shifting over to Plaquenil at 300 mg/day and it has been a little over a month. He says it will take ~ 3 months to have any effect so I'm just very gradually tapering the pred until then. I was also leery of trying this medication so I got a second opinion (he endorsed). They want to spare the prednisone, esp as I'm heading into menopause (osteo risk). Apparently they think because my blood numbers were a bit all over the place there's a chance there is some emerging RA or something - doc says there is overlap. (Fortunately I'm not having any issues in my hands yet.) So they think Plaquenil is safer for possible need for longer-term treatment.