Gold helps with arthritis when usual drug fails

May 27, 2005

Thu May 26, 2005 05:14 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Although jewelry may be the first thing

that springs to mind when someone says " gold, " injecting a liquid form

of the metal can help people with rheumatoid arthritis. In fact, gold

therapy has been around for a while, and now new research shows it can

be effective when combined with another treatment.

In the study, reported in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism, gold

therapy reduced the severity of arthritis in patients who had a poor

response with methotrexate, the standard drug used to treat the

disease.

Findings from several observation studies have shown that gold can

augment the treatment response seen with methotrexate, but until now,

this has not been investigated in a study in which patients were

randomly selected to receive gold or inactive " placebo " injections.

The study, which was conducted by Dr. M. Esdaile, from the

Arthritis Research Center of Canada in Vancouver, and colleagues,

involved 65 patients who received weekly injections of gold or placebo.

At 48-week follow-up, significantly more gold-treated patients had

experienced a treatment response than those given placebo. In addition,

the gold therapy was found to me more cost-effective.

These results support previous findings indicating that combination

therapy with gold and methotrexate is useful when the latter agent

fails to provide an optimal response, the authors state.

New and effective drugs called TNF blockers have recently become

available for rheumatoid arthritis, but they are expensive. " Given the

high costs of (newer anti-rheumatic drugs), we believe that there

continues to be an important role for gold in combination with

methotrexate, especially when cost is an issue, " Esdaile's team

concludes.

SOURCE: Arthritis & Rheumatism, May 2005.

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