Budesonide rather than Prednisone?

[sycophantichallenger]

Hi. My wife has been diagnosed as having Crohn's disease. It's been about 6 months since she was at crisis stage. There have been 3 hospital visits in total. After the first visit, she was given the bog standard, prednisone, sulfasalazine, and an antibiotic for treatment, and this alleviated the strong acute problems she was having.

However, as I'm sure you all know, Prednisone is HELL. I mean, I get upset when i think that she may be needing another course of Pred. She has been having more and more problems lately, one day with blood in her stool, and while she has refused to go to the hospital as yet, we will be seeing her doctor in about a week (GP).

What I want to know is, has anyone had success w/ Budesonide as a steroid course for acute crohn's symptoms? I've read that it "has" been used for treatment and has significantly less/less sever side effects. So, yah, I could request Budesonide as a treatment course rather than Prednisone, but I just want to ask if anyone else has had success, perhaps repeated success with Budesonide.

thanks in advance.

 

[teeny5]

It was great for me! It is milder though than the prednisone so might not be strong enough if her symptoms are really bad. Wouldn't hurt to discuss with the Dr.

 

[Hattie95]

I'm currently just under 4 weeks into my first ever course of budesonide. I think it is starting to do something as I'm not in quite as much agony as I was 10 weeks ago. So yeah, so far I would recommend it. Only thing for me is that i have got some muscle spasms from it, particularly in my thumbs and thighs but my GI thinks it could be do to electrolyte levels. But yeah it's just an annoyance and uncomfortable but nothing too scary or painful. Good luck with everything! Hope it works well for your wife!