excellent news today CRP down to 5! I'm on 20mg Pred for a month and crp has come down from 100 to 5. Is it going to be a false dawn when they start to taper me?? Anyone had a similar elation to be let down when it raises again as the Pred is lowered!!
If it starts to rise when the pred is tapered it is because they have tapered it to too low a dose. You are not reducing relentlessly to zero, you are reducing the dose to find the lowest dose that manages the symptoms and keeps the markers low. The best way to do that is very slowly - or rather, in very small steps. You are looking for the nutcracker not the sledgehammer!
In this thread
https://patient.info/forums/discuss/pmr-gca-and-other-website-addresses-35316
you will find other links in the first post with medical articles about managing PMR and GCA and reducing. Further down the thread you will find a couple of posts describing a slow reduction used successfully by quite a few patients on the forums and which is being looed at by one of the research groups as well. Another very similar one is being used by a consultant in the north of England.
The most important thing to remember is the pred cures nothing - you need some to maintain the status quo but it should be well lower than you are on at present.
LO andrea.my readings have stayed more or less the same 5&4.i have used the slow reduction plan that Eilleen? recomends.got down to 4mg then the cold from Hell struck.so i have gone back up to 7mg & booked bloods 4 this week to see if CRP has gone up,if not i shall start to reduce again.just to say Slowly does it.All the Best.Dave
My CRP started at 123 and has gone down when OK and then up when I have a flare, usually due to over enthusiasm on reduction on the part of my GP or rheumy. Also it went up when I had a cold.
Ah yes - forgot to mention: respiratory infections can increase CRP to as high as 60. Having a cold and a raised CRP is NOT a scenario where the pred needs increasing as a knee-jerk reaction.
As in my case with lung infection where CRP Shot up to 55 (from 5). In fact, rheumy told me not to go for standard blood test until infection is down in order to correctly monitor my levels.