Side effects from Plegridy

Hello Everyone!
Appreciate your advice.

I have been taking Plegridy since July 19 and with my first injection it seemed fine. Then with my second one I think maybe I locked it so that’s why I didn’t see the green tick.

With my third dose on August 16 I injected it and after a few hours I started feeling chills and shivering. Flu like symptoms. Plus I was very fatigued. Plus the site where I injected has a pink mark and itchy for more than a week. I got the flu like symptoms, chills and fatigue with my 4th dose two weeks later. Plus again the site a week later is itchy.

Is that normal? So that’s just something I would just have to be used to with the medication? Or it’s not normal? It’s fine, I will have to learn to manage and just not plan to go out or anything, I guess, on the day of the injection.

I will try to call the nurse or speak to the doctor, but wouldn’t mind hearing from others what their thoughts are on this, as well.

Thanks for reading! Sorry for the long post.

Hi there, have a look at the post from @MariaB123 under symptoms and treatments: MRI shows my MS is stable. She uses Plegridy and I think she found that the side effects died down after a few months use.

1 Like

Getting an erythema is normal. You can’t avoid it. The injection site will be red for 10 days or so, and it may get a bit itchy between days 3 and 6. Just use some witch hazel cream on it, it works miracles. The MS nurse shared this with me.

Shivers, fatigue, migrane, muscle pain, difficulty walking and feeling weak, even slightly high temperature, are nornal 24-48 hours after you inject with plegridy. Good old paracetamol works well on it. When you first start taking plegridy, you experience these symptomps a lot more intensively. It feels like cr*p to start with, in the first 2-3 months, to the point you want to give up and stop the treatment, BUT it does get a lot better over time. After about 6 months of taking it, I just feel under the weather for about 24 hours after the plegridy injection, I may take paracetamol a couple of times during that day, just in case (sometimesI don’t even need it). I inject on Wednesday evening. Thursday I feel so so, I take paracetamol just in case, to kill the migraine and any bone and muscle pain that I may occasionally get, but on Friday morning I wake up as normal, and even hit my exercise class at 10am.

I am not saying that plegridy is for everyone. Yet, it does get better and better; it always depends on your own body though. The itchy injection site is a ‘pain’, though, that will stay overtime and happen every single time you inject. You can control it with witch hazel and try not to wet the injection area with hot water for 24 hours after you inject. Before injecting, place an ice pack on the area used for injection, it also helps. Avoid the swimming pool with bleechy water too for a couple of days after injecting, also jacuzzi and sauna for 3 days after injecting. The heat is going to make your erythema worse. Avoid the heat and direct sunlight in the injection area. I sunbathed in Greece, and it was a big mistake because my injection site turned very itchy and a bit swollen.

1 Like

Thank you for connecting me with them!

Thank you for sharing your experience with me and for all the advice. Makes me feel reassured.

Hi, I started with Plegridy end of July - 1st injection was ok although on days 8 & 9 I felt flu like symptoms. 2nd injection was faulty and had to wait a few days to get the 2nd dose delivered to me, was not good. Had a site reaction, really itchy but a cool pack did take the itch away, just left the redness. I also had sickness and diarrhea - not sure if that was a side effect or a bug, and was so fatigue. 3rd injection has been ok, so far site redness and now on day 9 and today was fatigue, but hoping to go to work tomorrow.

Stay in touch and let me know how you get on, we can compare notes

1 Like

Will definitely let you know how I get on. Thanks for sharing!

1 Like