Corticosteroids and Arthritis Q & A

I am a bit confused. One of my doctors tell me that Arthrotec is what is causing my high blood pressure and the other doctor says that it is the Prednisone. I gained 5 pounds while on Prednsione for my RA. I am olny 32 years old with no history of high blood pressure. This only started while I was tapering off of Prednisone. Can one or both drugs cause my high blood pressure? How can I tell which one it is.

Is it ok to take Prednisone for a few days during a flare and just stop taking it. But I developed high blood pressure from the Prednisone. Will taking it for a short time raise my blood pressure?

Doctor, please help me. I have been diagnosed with an autoimmune, connective tissue disease called Cogans. I am currently on 15-23 medications a day and have been for the past 5 years. MY QUESTION IS — somewhere and sometime I read that it is totally natural for cholesterol levels to gradually increase due to the disease and/or medication. Am I correct? My family doctor does not believe me and I don’t remember where I read it. PLEASE, can you help?

Currently I am on 20mg of Methotrexate a week, 2 pills a day of 200mg celebrex and 7.5mg prednisone a day plus 2ultram twice a day for pain. I was told i had one of the worst cases of RA. I am 33 years old and have so many years to come on medications and was wondering…. 1) How much prednisone is ok to take daily if I needed to for years to come? 2) How much Methotrexate do they give you before they stop upping the dose? 20mg, 25mg etc. per wk. 3) I heard methotrexate stops working for some people in time after a couple years, does this happen a lot? 4) Last, I have read some articles on promising cure like shots etc. that are about to enter human testing, do you think such cures like at companies like Garvan Institute might really happen? I know this is a lot of questions, but every time i try to bring things up to the Rhummy docs I see, they just seem to want to rush you out to the next patient.

My pain management doctor started my on prednisone 5mg today instead of increasing my morphine dosage again, to see if it helps control the pain I have. She wants me to try it for a month to see if it helps at all. My question is, if it doesn’t help, can I just stop taking the 5mg per day or do I have to taper off? If so, how do you taper 5mg of prednisone? She didn’t seem to know the answer to that question either, so I would very much appreciate your response. Thank you!