What is the best medication for giant cell arteritis?

What is the best medication for giant cell arteritis?

The main treatment for giant cell arteritis consists of high doses of a corticosteroid drug such as prednisone. Because immediate treatment is necessary to prevent vision loss, your doctor is likely to start medication even before confirming the diagnosis with a biopsy.

Does GCA shorten your life?

Our results indicate that a diagnosis of GCA is significantly associated with reduced 5-year survival. The survival rates for cases and controls converge at 11.12 years, suggesting that the adverse affect on survival is present only in the years immediately following diagnosis.

Can you recover from GCA?

GCA isn’t curable, but long-term treatment with steroid medications can put you into remission. If this treatment doesn’t work, or it causes side effects that you can’t tolerate, your doctor might also give you methotrexate or Actemra.

Can GCA be fatal?

Death due to giant cell arteritis (GCA) is rare, and is usually caused by coronary or vertebral arteritis in the acute phase of the disease. A case of fatal GCA is reported in a woman with a normal erythrocyte sedimentation rate, who had been treated for temporal arteritis for eight months.

What triggers giant cell arteritis?

The cause of giant cell arteritis is still unknown but is thought to be from the immune system causing damage to the body’s own blood vessels. Polymyalgia rheumatica is an inflammatory disorder that is closely related to giant cell arteritis and occurs in 40% to 60% of patients with giant call arteritis.

How long do you take prednisone for giant cell arteritis?

Most patients with giant cell arteritis require at least two years of corticosteroid therapy. A few patients remain on a low dosage of corticosteroid indefinitely.

What is the most feared complication of giant cell arteritis?

Visual loss. Acute visual loss in one or both eyes is by far the most feared and irreversible complication of giant cell arteritis. The main blood supply compromised by giant cell arteritis is to the anterior optic nerve head via the short posterior ciliary arteries and that of the retina via the central retinal artery …

What is the most serious complication of giant cell arteritis?

The most feared complication of giant cell arteritis is irreversible vision loss. Other complications include aortic aneurysms, which can rarely rupture, and cerebrovascular events in the vertebrobasilar distribution.

Can GCA be treated without steroids?

Steroid-sparing therapies: Currently, there is some evidence for both tocilizumab and methotrexate as steroid-sparing agents for the treatment of GCA. Leflunomide is also considered useful by most experts, although its evidence in GCA is sparse.

How quickly does GCA progress?

Most symptoms in people with giant cell arteritis will develop gradually over one to two months, although rapid onset is possible.