Did your rheumatologist start Actemra? When were you diagnosed with GCA and PMR? How long have you taken Actemra?

Hopefully the flares will stop as Actemra starts to work but don't expect to taper off prednisone too soon. Welcome to the forum!

It seems to be common that a decent single morning dose of prednisone doesn't get rid of morning pain. Prednisone loses its full effect within 16hrs, so it is to be expected. Raising the dose is not always needed and is to be avoided if possible, and a dose rise doesn't necessarily take away the morning pain anyway.

I started on a single morning dose of 15mg which reduced but didn't take away morning pain, even though it's the recommended PMR starting dose in Australia. So I read widely and found that many here split the dose, taking most of it in the morning and a smaller part of it in the late afternoon or evening. For me, that was 12.5mg morning and 2.5mg in the early evening with dinner. It worked. No more morning pain. I'm currently taking 4.5mg mornings and 1.5mg early evening. So far so good, and the smaller evening dose doesn't affect my sleep.

Avoiding an increase in dose when possible is important to reduce bad prednisone effects like bone loss, muscle wasting and fluid retention. It's also important to keep the main part of the dose in the morning when the body naturally produces most cortisol. Up to you, but I'd be thinking about splitting the dose for pain control, rather than increasing it.