Hello, I'm seeing a neuro nurse for my CH and when my cycle recently started [after a glorious two years off] I asked for my usual renewal of a sumatriptan script and a prednisone blast prescription. New this time, she made me promise not to take any sumatriptan while I was taking prednisone ... else she wouldn't prescribe the prednisone ... that was a new one on me as I've combined the two for almost 20 years now. Not taking any sumatriptan early in the blast is easy, one is not having any clusters anyway, but towards the end of the blast when the beast inevitably returns, I need to take a third (33mg) of a sumatriptan to get a break. Oxygen is of course my number one abortive and it works great most of the time. Anyway, I've looked but can't find any contraindication for sumatriptan and prednisone and am wondering if this is something new I don't know about? My first reaction was my neuro was going cuckoo, when I asked her reason she said to avoid rebound headaches. I know about rebound headaches and they're not usually caused by taking a standard amount of any triptan while on prednisone. Am I late in learning of this rebound causing combination or is this information bogus as I suspect?  :-?

G'day and welcome aboard.

I'm certainly no expert on medications but my time here has always shown prednisone is used as a downward taper while another anti-inflammatory like verapomil builds up far enough in the body to be effective.

Never heard of sumatripan being banned while that's happening but perhaps the nurse knows something I don't.

I was cautioned once by a doctor to take care when combining prednisone and triptans as they can both increase blood pressure.  Note:  I had high blood pressure at the time.  Not sure if it is a concern when one's BP is normal.

Thank you AussieBrian and Traveller, I appreciate your feedback. I know prednisone and triptans can increase BP, and I do have high BP that I routinely treat ... normally with verapamil. I just double my dose from 240mg a day to 480mg a day when in cycle. But my nurse's concern was rebound headaches, which I am still dubious about.

One of the great problems we CHers face is the paucity of available medical data about our condition.  This void gets filled with reports of personal experiences, rumors, bias, and speculation.  I have seen regular reporting from folks about rebound headaches, and I am sure they exist for some, but I can't say for certain that I ever had them --and I used triptans almost daily for well over a year.