Does prednisone work for your flares? having first flare

[bobby5]

I was diagnosed with crohns 4 years ago and was in the hospital and lost 60lbs. I havent had a bit of trouble out of it for 4 years until last monday. I was having diarrhea fowl smelling gas loss of appitite and tired. The gi dr. prescribed me 40mg prednisone and almost immediatly felt better immediatly and its been 2 days and my stool is solid again and i feel almost normal. I was on 150 mg of imuran for 4 years. My question is once the prednisone gets the flare under control do you usually stay in remmission. This is my first flare so i dont know what to expect.
Thanks

 

[badbelly]

I think generally, the prednisone is used as the strongest medicine to calm the flare down, then a maintenance medicine is used to keep the next flare from coming. For me I took a course of pred back in March which helped calm everything down and then took some low strength maintenance meds, which unfortunately didn't work well enough and now I'm back flaring and on pred.

 

[bobby5]

Yeah I'm still on imuran as a maintenance med it worked for 4 years I don't know what caused the flare up

 

[nogutsnoglory]

Prednisone can act very quickly and effectively to bring relief. Many people love it in the beginning because it's a lifesaver. It's when the side effects begin that people grow less fond of the drug and need to begin tapering off.

 

[bobby5]

I was just wondering once it cleared your crohns up and you weed off of it how long did your crohns stay in remission?

 

[hawkeye]

It worked for my first flare a few years ago, I think that if you start going on it on a fairly regular basis it may be time to look at other meds or surgery, or so I get the impression from my GI.

 

[rollinstone]

I'm wondering the same thing, I had pred for my first flare last year and was on it for like 8 months due to messed up tapers. I went on imuran and went into remission. Though i recently flared up again, so in Tryna get into remission from enteral nutrition. Though if that doesn't work might have to bust out a short course of pred.