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Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR): Meet others & Share Your Story
Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR) | Last Active: Jan 27 8:38am | Replies (1879)Comment receiving replies
Interesting that your eyes had high pressure but no damage. Also interesting that your eyedrops helped you so much. Sadly, my eyes are very different and I have already lost some vision in my right eye. And I am 3 kind of drops and still higher than my doc would like. PMR is very much the wrong condition for me to have, seeing as how every doc agrees that steroid are the way to go. If anyone tries to get me cleared for Actemra, the insurance is going to have a hard time justifying a "no".
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Did you have glaucoma before or after starting prednisone? If you had pre-existing glaucoma then prednisone isn't a good medication for you. It sounds like your ophthalmologist knows what he/she is talking about. It would be better if there was another option like Actemra for you.
My ophthalmologist wasn't too worried when I was taking "short term" prednisone for uveitis. The concern was when I was taking prednisone "long term" for PMR.
I had no idea what all prednisone was doing to my body. Fortunately, I was having frequent eye exams because of recurring uveitis. My ophthalmologist would prescribe 60 mg of prednisone to me in order to treat each uveitis when it occurred. I didn't need to take prednisone very long and I could taper off in a month or two. The uveitis would go back into remission again. I didn't need prednisone again for another year or so until uveitis recurred again. The whole process of taking high doses of prednisone and tapering off again was very routine to me. I needed to do it every year or so for uveitis long before PMR was diagnosed.
After PMR was diagnosed, I was taking prednisone daily for years. At doses less than 20 mg, my eye pressures didn't increase too much. When my prednisone dose was over 30 mg, my eye pressures would go higher. That was when my ophthalmologist would get worried that my eye pressures were getting too high. I couldn't decrease my prednisone dose that easily because of body pain. It would hurt everywhere.
Technically, I didn't have glaucoma and my ophthalmologist didn't call it glaucoma for many years. My intraocular pressures were high because of prednisone but my eye pressures would decrease again when my prednisone dose was lower.
After many, many years of taking prednisone for PMR, my ophthalmologist started saying that I have glaucoma. The cosopt eye drops to treat glaucoma help but I'm not so good about doing the drops all the time. That was why my ophthalmologist begged me to do the eye drops regularly.
My ophthalmologist referred me to the following article to read.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5577123/#:~:text=Steroid%2Dinduced%20ocular%20hypertension%20was,resulting%20in%20steroid%2Dinduced%20glaucoma.