Hospital stay followed by steroids + remicade

[Dashdad]

My three year old was hospitalized with dehydration and fever while flaring, tons of tests and no results. Finally on the fourth day we pushed up his fifth remicade infusion with prednisone. Third round of steroids since April of 2015. Has anyone had a little one on both meds?

 

[my little penguin]

Ds has been on three meds at a time steriods humira and Mtx
I understand the concern
But typically its not long term

 

[Maya142]

Yes -- we've done both IV steroids with Remicade and oral Prednisone with Remicade. It's usually just until you can get the flare under control.

Hang in there!

 

[Dashdad]

Thank you MLP and Maya. My son is also on MTX. How much should we worry about infection? Haven't found a sweet spot yet. Regardless he's happy to out of the hospital.

 

[Maya142]

We have even done high dose Remicade (20 mg/kg) every 4 weeks, IV steroids and Imuran (similar to MTX). We were VERY worried about infections, but she didn't get any. We didn't do anything special, just lots of hand washing! We had absolutely no infections or complications from either the Remicade or the other meds.

I would ask your doctor what precautions they would like you to take, if any.

Good luck!

 

[pdx]

Glad he's back home. My daughter was on Remicade and methotrexate all last year, with some IV steroids and entocort along the way, and she didn't seem any more prone to infections. She got strep throat once--it went away with a standard course of antibiotics--and one cold over the whole year. It seems like the risk of infection is less about day to day stuff, and more about very rare things like TB or uncommon fungal infections (which hopefully your son won't ever be exposed to).

 

[my little penguin]

Ds was on all three
We saw infectious disease to determine if he needed to take a daily abx just incase to prevent infection
Basically they looked at his cbc
His numbers were normal so no abx needed
Just hand washing