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MILD disease that doesn't respond to prednisone

Hi all!

It's been awhile!

Just wondering if it is possible for prednisone and other steroid to just "not work" for somebody with relatively mild disease.

Long story short, I am flaring again. D, mucus, pain... the whole shebang. Symptoms are definitely the worst they have been since diagnosis, but still not horribly severe. GI did an MRE in August and prescribed 40mg prednisone. MRE showed inflammation in terminal ileum, confirming that the disease is active again. I was on prednisone for 6 weeks, but only noticed minuscule improvement in symptoms. My GI felt that this indicated that there was severe inflammation that would not be resolved by medication alone and we decided to explore surgery as an option. Anyway, on Friday I had my pre-surgery colonoscopy and to both of our surprise, the inflammation seemed relatively mild. Now, of course, we have decided not to go through with the surgery. Instead my GI wants to but me on Entyvio because I "failed" prednisone.

Has anybody else had this experience?
 

Jennifer

Adminstrator
Staff member
Location
SLO
40mg isn't that high of a dose and 6 weeks is a fairly short amount of time. With a higher dose and taken longer you might have seen better results but it's best to treat with other medications on a regular basis to prevent flares rather than use steroids all the time to control a flare. I'm very surprised that they would think to opt for surgery without attempting other medications first. If they opt for surgery again if you don't respond to this new medication quickly enough you may want to seek a second opinion before going through with it. Surgery should always be a last resort. They could have increased the dose, they could have tried another steroid like Entocort and they should have tried a biologic or immunosuppressant before considering surgery. I hope the Entyvio works for you. Keep us posted.
 
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