I’ve developed severe joint pain and muscle pain after being on 6-mercap for 6 months. I have a call into my doctor and he is supposed to call me tomorrow.
Hi Paul,
Have you had any news from your doctor yet?
I’ve never heard of that drug before. I take Azathioprine along with Prednisolone. I had aching, sore muscles and stiff joints with AIH, before taking meds. I now that the aching etc gets worse when trying to lower the dose of Prednisolone, but it’s supposed to improve in time. I never manage to get lower than 7.5 of Pred.
I was able to get off the Prednisone and my muscles really killed me at the time. However my Doc said it was not the 6-mercap. He said arthritic disorders are associated with AIH and is sending me to a rheumatologist. He wants me to go back on Prednisone 5 mg and see if that will help. I’m thinking about it. I got steroid-induced diabetes when I was on Prednisone earlier in the year. 6-mercap is short for mercaptopurine. It is an immunosuppressant just like what you are taking.
Take Care
Sandy
If you don’t use it. You lose it!
-----Original Message-----
From: rosa [mailto:hepatitis-autoimmune-cpt4575@lists.careplace.com]
Sent: Friday, June 22, 2007 10:37 AM
To: Sandra Hale
Subject: Re: [hepatitis-autoimmune] Side effects of 6-mercap
Thanks for your reply!! I hope you are doing well. Fortuanately the joint pain went away after 6 weeks. I am currently in remission taking 100 mg of 6-mercap each day.
I had allergic reactions to the usual drugs used such as what the others use since they are all sulfur based so I was on the 6-Mercap but it wasn’t strong enough to do the job it needed to do, and they couldn’t put me on stronger doses so they added another drug to make it more potent. As it turned out that other drug made me so tired and exhausted all the time that stairs in my house were a real issue so I got off of it. Good luck with that therapy though, I know it’s really effective so long as it does the job, and I didn’t have any side effects from the Mercap alone!