I have the opportunity to get a free H1N1 Vaccine through my husbands employer but am currently on a rather long round of Prednisone because of a skin rash that I came down with in September. I am tapering off the Prednisone now but won't be done until the end of December. The vaccine will be offered next week. Does anyone know if you can get the vaccine while on the Prednisone steroid?
Getting the shot is no problem since it is a dead virus, as the previous poster mentioned. If you were to get the nasal spray you would need to be on 5mg prednisone or less per day with no other chronic conditions, and meet the age requirement.
I am also on prednisone. My docs have told me that since prednisone is an immune suppresant it is possible that if you get the shot while on Prednisone your body will not mount a full immune response to the vaccine, thus you won't build a good immunity to it. That being said, as others have pointed out it is good to have any protection that you can from it while on prednisone due to those same immune suppressing features. I have not heard that there would be any complication or likihood of getting H1 from the shot given prednisone therapy.
I am planning to wait unitl I taper down to my normal daily dose of pred to get the shot.
I've been on pred for around 18 months, and had the H1N1 vaccine on friday. I was told that the only difference is that if you are on 10mg or above, you need two shots, whereas if you are on less than this dose you only need a single shot. So far I have not developed any flu-like symptoms, but my arm is very sore from the injection, to the extent that I cannot sleep on that side. So my advice is to get the shot on the side you do not sleep on.
