Is my cat's Prednisone dose too high or safe for long-term use?

Yes, that is a typical decreasing dosage program. While steroids are not recommended for long term use, cats have less problems with them than dogs. Also long term use generally means many months or years. Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach to help you care get answers to your veterinary questions.

Hello. This is a reasonable thing to do, but please discuss this with your veterinarian first. Your vet has all the particulars on your cat's condition, so for me just to say its OK to start cutting back on a medication without having any information on why the medication was started in the first place would not be right & may be harmful to your pet. Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach.

Typically cats get really bad vomiting episodes with IBD and occasional diarrhea. The prednisone likely is treating for inflammation or an immune mediated condition of the gut, which can include lymphoma, IBD, or a condition called lymphocytic plasmocytic colitis. At any rate, if the prednisone is helping, then I would continue with therapy as indicated. A lot of the times you can only get a final diagnosis with gut diseases by having a surgical biopsy taken of the intesines. As you can imagine this is a very invasive procedure, so response to therapy is typically the route we taken when making suspected diagnoses. I would also highly consider getting Beau on a hypoallergenic diet to help make it easy for her gut to digest food. My top picks here are Royal Canin hypoallergeic hydrolyzed protein, Hill's Z/D, OR Royal Canin Selected protein (rabbit/potato). Ask your vet for a prescription if interested! I hope this helps and best wishes with your pet Beau and her chronic loose stools. Take care.

Given her age, steroid side effects from long term use tend to become less of a risk if the benefits are clearly improving her quality of life. Depending on the nature of the growth, low level chemotherapy medications may provide an opportunity to halt growth or even reduce the mass but this would require assessment by a specialist

Cats are normally very resistant to the side effects of Prednisone, so the signs you are describing are very usual to see in cats. Was Elliot started on any other medications that may be causing these symptoms? I would definitely discuss any changes in his Prednisone dosing with his veterinarian. Sometimes we can get away with lower doses, but need to decrease the amounts carefully. We normally do not recommend decreasing the amount by more than 50% at a time, so decreasing from 1 mL twice daily to 0.5 mL once daily would be decreasing the dose by four times, which might be too extreme for Elliot (even after only 6 days on the steroid). The good news is that we do not tend to see heart problems with oral steroids (only injectible steroids), so you do not need to worry about heart problems with oral steroids. I hope that answered your question. Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach.

Hello and thank you for reaching out to Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach. We do not typically see prednisolone cause an elevation of white blood cells, as this is an corticosteroid which is anti-inflammatory at most doses, and even immunosuppressive at higher doses. Elevated white blood cell counts can be due to inflammation alone, such as that from irritable or inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Long term use of steroids can cause liver damage, which may result in inflammation and increased white blood cell counts. Generally cats with IBD will have thickened intestines on an abdominal ultrasound, but this can be subtle and hard to detect without a veterinary radiologist performing the ultrasound. I hope this is helpful - best of luck managing Trixie's IBD!

Hi there. If Beau is on prednisolone to treat a chronic GI issue such as inflammatory bowel disease or something similar, then yes - lowering his dosage could certainly cause diarrhea or other symptoms to recur. If he was on it for something unrelated to this, then I would not expect decreasing his dosage to cause diarrhea "out of the blue" - so in that case, it's likely that there is some other cause.