Tapering from 1mg prednisone

Posted by abi @abi, Mar 6, 2023

I was given prednisone for GCA diagnosis in June 2022.
My rhumatologist has directed my drops in dosage by 1mg every 2 weeks until I reached my 5mg dose. At 5mg she recommended I drop
dosage by 1mg every 3 weeks until reaching zero. I have seen your reference to the UK site and see their fear of dropping too fast.
I am presently at 1mg every 3 weeks.

I am doing that but now am at 1mg and know you and other sites (UK site) recommend a much slower drop. I expressed my concern to her and she suggested considering .5mg drop every 3 weeks, which she left up to my discretion. Can anyone share their experience with the drop from the 1mg dosage in regards to symptoms, etc.?

Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR) Support Group.

John, Volunteer Mentor | @johnbishop | Mar 6, 2023

@abi, My experience with 2 occurrences of PMR - The first occurrence it took 3 and half years for me to go from 20 mg to zero. The last six months I went back and forth between 1 mg and 1/2 mg until I was able to taper off with little to no morning pain (0 or 1 on my pain scale). My second occurrence of PMR was 6 years later and it took me a 1 and a half years to taper from 20 mg to 0. The second time around I had made some lifestyle changes which allowed me to taper faster and I was able to go from 1 to 0 on my last taper with little to no morning pain. The lifestyle changes I made was more daily exercise without over doing it, losing weight by eliminating processed foods and sugar (as much as I could 🙂) and trying to eliminate inflammatory foods.

My tapering was normally monthly for the bigger drops at the beginning and then every 2 weeks for the smaller tapers toward the end. Everyone is different but it's good to hear your rheumatologist is working with you.