Intermittent low dose prednisolone is safe in rheumatoid arthritis

doi:10.1136/bmj.316.7144.1606a

From trainee to consultant, BMJ Group offers doctors around the world tailored information, special events, learning resources and recruitment services at every step along their career path.

... by doctors, for doctors, for patients
We are open for entries!

Online learning

BMJ Learning

High-quality CME / CPD for doctors and other healthcare professionals. BMJ Learning features hundreds of accredited, peer-reviewed learning modules in text, video, and audio formats. Find out more

Courses and Qualifications

BMJ Masterclasses

BMJ Masterclasses, led by experts, help clinicians to use the latest evidence and recent guidelines in practice and meet their CPD/CME requirements. Find out more

Exam Preparation

The leading provider of online exam preparation, helping over 167,000 healthcare professionals to pass their exams. Find out more

onExamination

Search all BMJ comment articles:

From

Limit by

Access to the full text of this article requires a subscription or payment. Please log in or subscribe below.

Peter C Gøtzsche (p.c.gotzsche@cochrane.dk), Director,
Helle Krogh Johansen, Senior researcher

The Nordic Cochrane Centre, Rigshospitalet, Department 7112, Tagensvej 18 B, DK-2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark

EDITOR—In our meta-analysis we concluded that doses of prednisolone of ≤15 mg daily may be used intermittently in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, particularly if the disease cannot be controlled by other means.1

An accompanying editorial by Dennison and Cooper warned that doubts about the safety of this treatment remained.2 They also mentioned a number of side effects reported in a narrative review by Caldwell and Furst which we also cited in our meta-analysis (reference number 57). They complained that we had not subjected our …