GOLD PILLS FOR ARTHRITIS
Report #6493 4/12/95
A recent study in the medical journal, Clinical Therapeutics, shows that oral gold pills are a safe and effective treatment for some types of arthritis.
Arthritis means that a person's joints and muscles hurt. It can be caused by infections such as Lyme disease acquired from a tick bite, or from gonorrhea or a staph bacterial infection; trauma such as an old football or automobile injury; crystal deposits such as gout, degenerative diseases such as osteoarthritis where the joint cartilage wears away; and immune abnormalities, such as rheumatoid arthritis, in which the body's own immune system that is supposed to protect you from infections starts to attack and damage your joints.
The first line treatments for rheumatoid arthritis include aspirin and the non-steroidals such as ibuprofin, Anaprox, Indocin, Motrin and so forth. These medications help to relieve pain but do nothing to stop the progressive destruction of joints. For the last 70 years doctors have used gold injections to slow the joint damage caused by rheumatoid arthritis, but injected gold causes many severe side effects such as liver and kidney damage and lowered white and red blood cell counts. This recent study from Japan shows that gold pills are relatively safe and can help to prevent joint destruction in rheumatoid arthritis. A person takes 3 mg tablets of auranofin twice a day and must be monitored monthly with blood tests.
By Gabe Mirkin, M.D., for CBS Radio News
M Itokazu, T Matsunaga, Y Oshita. Efficacy and safety of auranofin in patients with active early rheumatoid arthritis. Clinical Therapeutics 17: 1 (JAN-FEB 1995):60-73. All of these measurements had improved significantly after 12 months of treatment. Moreover, no adverse events were observed during the treatment period. Therefore, the results confirm that auranofin is an effective and safe DMARD and is useful as a first-line therapy in the treatment of patients with RA.