How long does predisone stay in your system??

Question

How long does predisone stay in your system??

Answer 1

Usually that really is not the point when you consider prednisone (I assume this is what you mean).

Prednisone is a corticosteroid and the body naturally makes this type of hormone in the adrenal gland. The stimulus for making corticosteroids comes from the anterior pituitary.

Long term use of even low doses of a corticosteroid makes the adrenal gland atrophy, like muscles atrophy if you do not exercise.

Therefore if a person then suddenly stops taking the corticosteroid supplement then the body can go into a life threating crisis.

Large dose of corticosteroids taken over a few days pose no problem for most people, (unless they have a blood suger problem). Some people go psychotic on it , but that is not common.

This is basic physiology and medicine, see the Merck Manual (now free online) and look it up in a physiology text.

The average half life of prednisone is about 3.6 hours, and it takes 4 half lives to remove about 93% of the drug, so you can expect most of the drug to be out of the body in 12 hours.

There are other long term risks with the drug, it works great but the longer you continously use it the more it silently undermines the body's defenses and bone density.