Approved for Humira for chronic pain/ankylosing spondylitis.

I take Humira for seronegative spondyloarthropathy, which is the peripheral version of AS—my spine is not affected; only my peripheral joints so far.

I’ve actually had a really great response, but everyone is different. My rheumatologist follows the treatment guidelines for AS because they’re in the same family of diseases. It’s my understanding that TNF blockers (like Humira) are usually the first to try. And if you don’t get enough relief, are a non-responder or can’t tolerate it, then they may try a JAK inhibitor to go after a different inflammatory protein.

If you have the choice, I recommend asking for the citrate-free version—the needle is smaller and as the name suggests, it lacks the citrate that usually causes pain on injection. I wasn’t originally on Humira, so I can’t say for sure. I was on Enbrel, but they changed their formulation, which gave me injection-site reactions.

I’ve had zero injection-site reactions on Humira and very little pain on injection. They say it can take up to 3 months for a TNF blocker to take full effect, but I felt a difference in pain in just a week. While I had headaches starting Enbrel, I had none on Humira.

My inflammatory pain (I also have central sensitization, hEDS/HSD, and small fiber neuropathy) went from a 7 down to a 3-4. PT to help my tendons heal and for central sensitization took me the rest of the way so that I’m now between 0-3, though I have pain for other reasons.

The one thing different about my situation is I ended up needing to take one Humira dose every 7 days instead of every 14 days, which thankfully my insurance approved.

I have heard of others who’ve had headaches or GI issues on Humira, but I’ve had neither.

I do feel it’s worth trying. Injections can be intimidating but the needle is very small and the citrate-free version, if you can get it into the right spot often had very little pain, and it’s much less incidence of side effects than gabapentin and much smaller long-term side-effects than NSAIDs.

I hope it goes well for you!

Thanks much for the information.
Hopefully my first doses are here within a week and I'll share the results!