Back to Basics - What is Prednisone?! Part 1

Funny enough I started this blog a little while ago and never actually wrote a post on basic information about just what exactly Prednisone is and why you might be on it! That might actually be helpful to you all, right?! When I started writing this post I realized that this post would be covering a lot and therefore REALLY long. So I decided to split this into 3 posts - What is Prednisone and why do we need it (1), Different Forms of Corticosteroids (2), and What diagnosis' might require Treatment with Prednisone (3). Hopefully splitting it up this way will make it a bit easier to read lol!

First things first...

Let me just tell you that there is nothing in the world of medicine like this drug - you can take that as both a positive and a negative. I'll be the first one to say Prednisone has, without a doubt, saved my life many times as well as hundreds of thousands of other people suffering with an auto-immune disorder and even other illnesses. The medical field refers to it as a miracle drug and it is truly nothing short of that. As much as I loath the thought of being on Prednisone (I'll explain that later lol) I'm incredibly grateful for the brilliant minds that explored this drug and made it available to us. I absolutely have to express that to you all because a lot of what you might hear about Prednisone and the side effects are very negative. However, Prednisone does have a very important part to play in the world of medicine and I have to give it the props it deserves in that way!

Okay to enough rambling lol - What is Prednisone?

Since most of us on here are probably not doctors (nor am I lol) so let me just explain Prednisone in the way I understand it - WebMD says that Prednisone is a medication in the drug classification called corticosteroids (which doesn't mean a whole lot now but we'll get into that later) and it is a very powerful immune suppressant drug. Basically, it is used when the immune system is seriously wigging out. When Prednisone is taken by someone with an auto-immune disorder the symptoms of the disease quiets down. So for example in my case - I have something called Still's disease which is (loosely) a bizarre form of Rheumatoid Arthritis. When I take Prednisone my immune system quits attacking my joints and they are no longer red, swollen, and painful. The Prednisone has suppressed my out of control immune system so that my body is no longer being attacked by itself which causes all of  these nasty symptoms.

Getting a bit more technical, different auto-immune disorders manifest themselves in different ways depending on what cells in the immune system are glitched. Whatever auto-immune disease you have the symptoms are always caused by the body's inability to control the immune system response and it's ability to tell what is "self" and what is a foreign invader in the body. Since Prednisone has the ability to tackle such a wide range of immune cells it is the perfect drug to use during the diagnosis stage and when the disease cannot be controlled by a more specific immune suppressant drug that doctors prefer to use for a long term treatment plan. This is for numerous reasons: they often have much less side effects and are better able to suppress the the specific cells your immune system is over producing. It also takes time for a lot of these drugs to build up in the body so Prednisone is often used in conjunction with them while they're building up in your body to keep you from feeling all the symptoms of your illness.

So why DOES Prednisone work? Prednisone is actually very similar to a natural hormone that is produced in our bodies that you've probably heard of called Cortisol. Cortisol is a very important hormone produced by our adrenal glands that acts as a type of natural immune suppressant. It is absolutely essential for life! A healthy body uses Cortisol to keep the body in a state of homostasis or in other words, balance, allowing the body to fight infection but not allowing it to get out of control. However, there may be times when an environmental problem such as a poison ivy reaction or a disorder that causes a glitch in the immune system which then causes the balance to shift in the body and the body's defense (Cortisol) is not enough to control the immune system. Sometimes the glitch (an auto-immune disease) is that the immune system is no longer able to tell what is "self" and what is "foreign". All of these scenarios is a cause for some amount of corticosteroids in one form or another. Prednisone is a play on Cortisol. It is very similar so it helps further suppress the immune system.

Alrighty guys, I think that's enough for this post. Of course, let me know if you have any questions and be sure to check out the 2nd part - Different forms of Corticosteroids (Prednisone) - for even more info about this drug. Thanks for reading!