I was diagonsed with PMR last April but the last few months I've been having pain and stiffness mostly in my left hand and fingers but also in my right hand aswell as the normal PMR stiffness and pain in my arms and shoulders etc. Some mornings I can hardly bend them and my knuckles look swollen. Anyone else having this or any help to ease it ?
Alan
I assume you are on pred?
If you are on the right dose then you shouldn't have much pain and stiffness from PMR except. possibly, first thing in the morning until the pred starts to work. PMR can affect hands and feet and maybe it is that and you are simply at slightly too low a dose. Your hands in general may appear puffy but the pain tends to be due to tenosynovitis and I don't remember my knuckles being swollen in particular - it was fingers that hurt.
However, sometimes LORA (late onset RA) can appear with exactly the same symptoms as PMR and only later do the more typical signs of RA appear. As many as 1 in 6 of PMR patients go on to be given a different diagnosis at some later point, many of them LORA. It is something to mention to your doctor.
It could also be osteoarthritis - and there something called Flexiseq may help - ArthritisUK sell it through their website and Lloyds the Chemist also sell it. It's sort of like WD40 for people joints! Friends who have used it swear by it and found that having used it for their knees - their hands hurt less too! YOu have to wait 10 mins after applying it and in that time the cream on their hands had had time to help there too!
Thank you for the reply. Yes I'm on pred, down to 10mg at the moment from 20mg when I started last year. Sometimes I think I'm to low as maybe once every two weeks I get a bit more pain than other times but as normal the doctors wants me as low as possible. I'll look into the Flexiseq as it could be as you say osteoarthritis
Had all those symptoms. Also had like "electric shock nerve pain" Lyrica seems to have given me my hands back...they are normal. Don't know if the Prednisole was also a contributor....I suspect so
good luck
Jean
After a year of reducing from 15 to 3.5 mg my hands started to swell and ache each morning. I couldn't close my fists fully. My thumbs were particularly painful.
i upped the dose of prednisone to 5 mg and in a few days it resolved.
Since then I have reduced back down to 4 and holding.
I had similar response to variations in my pred dosage, just adding 1mg was enough to make a huge difference in my thumb joints each morning.
And at different times, other localized symptoms like feet and neck pain also responded to very small adjustments in my dosage.
I've always adjusted my dosage for what are/were the worst symptoms at the time, whether it was fatigue or my thumb joints that kept me from working, or ear-ache/headache that kept me from sleeping.