Prednisone and Pain

At 6mg pain & stiffness intensified. Increased to 7.5mg with 85% relief. Going down to 0.5mg a month if my CRP is normal & my symptoms r tolerable.

This is not a race. Tapering should be slow.

The prednisone definitely helped my pain. But as I have slowly tapered down from 10 mg starting in April 2022 until now at 5 mg, I have realized that prednisone is not covering the pain from my lower back. My rheumatologist agreed that this pain is not PMR. I am getting a steroid shot on Monday for lumbar pain and numbness that goes all the way down from my lower back to my right foot.

Hi @keelin, if prednisone did not help your pain, odds are you do not have PMR. Giant Cell Arteritis, the same disorder that attacks the temporal, ophthalmic and other arteries requires twice the prednisone PMR does. The symptoms include headache, tender scalp, problems with vision, problems chewing, dry cough etc. I had an incredibly stiff neck. I started at 40 mg prednisone a year and a half ago. I've been off prednisone for about six weeks. GCA needs treatment because it can cause blindness or stroke. If your symptoms are not responsive to prednisone and you do not have GCA, it could be malignancy, infection connective tissue disorder or hypothyroidism. (Cecil and Goldman's Textbook of Medicine). I hope you get some answers and some relief!

I started on 15mg prednisone over two weeks ago after a confirmation by PET scan of pmr. I’m only 55 so going from being a 5 day a week runner, workouts, etc person it has been extremely difficult for me. 15 mg helped significantly but I had 2 areas that were stubbornly not decreasing in pain. My neck and shoulders and behind my knees. Specialist increased last week to 20mg which has helped the shoulders/neck but I still have pain behind my knees if I try to kneel - which I haven’t been able to do for months. Has anyone else experienced a stubborn spot that the prednisone doesn’t seem to help or at least to help significantly?

Not true. Prednisone does not work for everybody with PMR. The side effects required me to go way down to 1mg only.
I have PMR, and nothing else.

Okay, thanks.

I am on a low-dose 7 1/2 MG daily and aspirin. My pain is not gone. It’s like a dull ache all the time. Arm mobility and fatigue and some pain are my main problems. And then toward the end of the day it gets worse but it’s not as bad as it was back in August. I don’t want to go back there. the pain was so bad. I am relatively new to this but hoping that the Aspirin and prednisone will eventually give me complete relief but I don’t expect it.
I’m learning and this group helps me. I don’t know how much emotions and stress has to do with PMR.

I'm no expert but I do think stress, anxiety and emotions can play a big part in PMR. Making sure I got some sort of exercise each day helped me when my PMR was active...along with my prednisone dose for the day.

Once other conditions are eliminated, then relief from pain with 20-25 mg of Prednisone seems to be a classic indicator that the underlying condition is PMR.
If you do not have this relief from pain then how are you so certain that your condition is PMR?