I have GCA/PMR. My sister in law has PMR. But I notice that her pred tablets
are Red and mine are white? Is there any difference?
Also is it OK to have the odd glass of wine when on Pred?
I assume you are in the UK? The red tablets are 5mg enteric coated, 2.5mg enteric coated are brown. Enteric coated means they have a special coating which allows them to pass through the stomach before being broken down in a different part of the gut. It takes a bit longer but it avoids stomach irritation which is often a problem with pred and the reason many doctors hand out omeprazole at the same time as pred. At one time it was more expensive to prescribe them so the NHS advised GPs not to use them and give ordinary white pred plus omeprazole. The drug companies immediately raised the price of ordinary pred so the price differential no longer applies though the doctors don't appear to know that!
If it isn't OK to drink wine with pred then I - and many others - are in trouble!
Hi,the red ones are gastro-resistant.As for drinking red wine, I can't tolerate wine because of my acid reflux so I'm unable to advise..
And blodwyn has remined me - you just have to try what you can drink. I couldn't drink reds for a long time, still can't drink some. And some white wines seemed very acidy. Others noticed the same problem.
Thankyou Eileen, will ask if I can change to the Red 5mg enteric coated pred, seems sensible:
and I will have the glass of Rose or White and see how I go.
Cheers.
BEST to ask the pharmacist. He has more idea than the doctor or anyone else.
Red wine is supposedly an anti inflammatory so definitely OK as far as I am concerned. Grapes are also supposed to be anti inflammatory so I suppose that covers all wine!!
I have been taking the coated pred and have found them great. The only problem is that the smallest dosed tablet is 2.5mg which can be a bit of a problem when getting onto lower daily doses.
Yes Ptolemy,I had to revert to taking the white tablets in order to reduce my dosage 1mg at a time, so that can be a problem.
Fortunately I had been taking Lansaprosole for some time before being diagnosed with PMR and it seems to work reasonably well for me.
It is possible for wine and Prednisolone to interact and decrease the effectiveness of the medication. There is also the risk of stomach ulcers as both wine and Pred can cause stomach irritation.
Alcohol can put stress on the adrenal glands (as can coffee and sugar), and these glands are already being suppressed by high dose steroids. When you get down to 7.5/5mg of Pred, those adrenal glands will be trying to get back to producing their pre-treatment normal steroid (cortisol) supply, so if alcohol inhibits the functioning of the adrenal glands then the body has less cortisol available for the stress response.
Obviously a very personal decision, but I decided not to drink any wine during my years on Pred.
I'm not 100% certain Jersey Royal - but from my lay experience of medications I have noticed that different manufactures do have either different size, shape and colour? I've never seen anything but white for preds, the dosage indicated by size. There are numbers and/or letters which seem to be consistent across manufactures for some tablets - perhaps we have a pharmacist who can answer on this forum?
On the wine question I certainly have the odd glass of wine - but it's very much just a glass now and again.
Ptolemy and blodwyn - using my reduction plan very slowly (i.e. repeating stages where required and starting with lots of days between at the beginning) has worked with the enteric coated for some people.
Ptolemy - again, like your way of thinking!