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← Return to PMR Taper and pain
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Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR) | Last Active: May 30 12:19pm | Replies (63)
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There is no gold standard for tapering off prednisone. This video gives reasonable "guidelines" to follow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tYNlKpGzoA
Nobody knows the best way for everyone to taper off prednisone treatment for PMR.
I'm happy this doctor mentioned concomitant inflammatory arthritis. She also mentions twice a day or "split" (BID) dosing.
Replies to "There is no gold standard for tapering off prednisone. This video gives reasonable "guidelines" to follow...."
Thank you for posting this.
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I discussed tapering at length with my doctor and did plenty of online research. What I discovered is a lot of the tapering exercise is about getting you adrenal glands to kick back in as well as concern over your PMR returning. Somehow I believe these are co-related but I have no basis for this opinion. My research told me that the problems with the reactivation of the adrenal glands seem to rear up around the 4-6mg of steroid range. Once I hit the 4mg per day range I started shortening my time on a single dosage and I also went down slowly between dosages. I moved from 4 to 3 by doing 3.5mg/day for 4 days, then did 3mg for only 17 days. I continued to reduce the time at each dosage level by 2-4 day. This reduced my tapering time significantly. My Rheumy permitted me to define my own schedule but I had to commit to returning to 5mg and contacting her as soon as any pain returned.