A day after my third injection of Enbrel, the site has a red patch of 5cm diameter. It’s not itchy or painful. I was wondering if anyone had to change biologic due to injection site reactions.
The nurse told me to get antihistame from my GP and take it an hour before each injection and then for three days after.
From what I understand, a reaction of that level is fairly common (I had a few), and they usually reduce in both frequency and severity pretty quickly on subsequent injections (mine did). As it wasn’t itchy or sore, I actually just ignored it.
Same here, yael…that seems to be a common reaction. It happened with my first several injections, too. 
I didn’t take antihistamines for it, though.
I was getting a steadily worse reaction from the Enbrel autoinjector. When I switched to the prefilled syringe no more problem.
Thanks - good to hear.
Went to my GP who said I should show the Rheumy but problem is that she’s not easliy avaialbe. I left a message. It the meantime the red patch has grown! Now a ring of 8 cm. I will do the next one on the leg. And here’s me thinking that everything will be OK once I get my biologic!! 
Show your rheumie (can you email a picture?). I’d also contact your biological patient support people. However, I had a huge site reaction when I started Enbrel, big as my hand, hot, raised and itchy. I sent a picture to the clinic in Toronto, and they were totally casual about it. The Enbrel patient support folks reacted with a shrug and “We’ve seen worse”. It eventually went away after many months, but I did go through several large tubes of Walmart anti-itch cream.
The injection site reaction is most common when using the sure clik injector and less so with the prefilled syringes. The autoinectors have a very small amount of latex.
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I still love the autoinjectors. I never tried any other injection method because when my sister was a diabetic I was supposed to learn how to give her a shot but I just couldn’t stick that needle in!!! I don’t need to see the needle with the autoinjector!
thanks guys…feel less worried about it now! We’ll see how it goes
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