Hart Nat Hentoff David Horowitz Arianna Huffington Marianne Jennings Michael Kelly Mort Kondracke Ch. My sister has it and has been on prednisone for several weeks. Polymyalgia rheumatica, a disease of unknown cause, commonly affects adults over 50. Its symptoms include muscle pain and stiffness, fever, loss of appetite, headache, weakness and malaise. Anemia may be present.
Patients suffer from diffuse inflammation of the body's muscles and, often, major arteries.
Because not all patients with polymyalgia have elevated sed rates, biopsy may be necessary to confirm the diagnosis. Prednisone, a form of cortisone, is the treatment of choice and typically relieves symptoms, to an astonishing degree, within 36 hours. In the presence of temporal arteritis, the medicine must be promptly administered to prevent serious visual complications. The amount of therapy usually can be tapered as the sedimentation rate returns to normal and the patient's symptoms subside. However, if there are eye problems, prednisone should be continued indefinitely, even for years.