Gold for Arthritis NEED ISSUE

More than 2,000,000 persons in the U. S. are victims of rheumatoid arthritis. What causes arthritis doctors do not know. Some think it a circulatory disturbance; a few call it an allergy; others believe it a sign of emotional conflict. The most widely held theory considers arthritis the result of a streptococcus infection. Since they have not understood its cause, doctors have blindly tried all kinds of treatment, ranging from tooth pulling (to remove a focus of infection), to injections of bee venom (to combat the allergy). But cures are few and far between.

New methods of treatment have usually started with great fanfare, and landed on the medical dust heap within three years. One British researcher advised his colleagues to "make haste to use a new remedy before it is too late."

Every year a handful of specialists review the progress of arthritis research and pass judgment on new treatments. One of these few is Dr. Martin Henry Dawson, of Manhattan's famed Presbyterian Hospital. Last week, at a meeting in New Haven of the Society of American Bacteriologists, Dr. Dawson told his colleagues about a remarkable drug used for the treatment of arthritis.

Working on the assumption that the chief cause of arthritis is a streptococcus infection, British and German doctors 15 years ago tried injections of gold salts to combat the germs. Although 10% of 750 British patients were "cured," and 57% showed "marked improvement," American physicians hesitated to experiment with the salts. Reason: an overdose of gold may produce skin rashes, a sore mouth and tongue, disorders of the kidneys and blood. But over a year ago. Dr. Dawson decided to try chrysotherapy (from the Greek chrysos, meaning gold).

To patients in the early stages of arthritis he gives a course of twelve weekly injections of a gold-sulfur compound. Injections are made into a muscle. Doses are too small to bring toxic results: the first injection is only ten milligrams, the second 50, the next ten 100. During the first three weeks, said Dr. Dawson, a patient may feel "much worse." But in the second half of the course he shows "marked improvement." After the twelfth dose he is given a month's rest before another course of injections.

To the victims of old, "burned-out" arthritis, gold salts bring no relief. Those whose joints are still flaming must continue treatment for the better part of a year, must be observed for two years. Since cautious Dr. Dawson has been using the drug for only 18 months, he has reported no figures on "cures." He indicated that after giving the treatment to 120 patients, the number of recoveries was "definitely promising."

New experiments on mice, he told his colleagues in New Haven last week, showed that gold salts kill streptococci. Tying this up with his clinical results, Dr. Dawson concluded on circumstantial evidence that the streptococcal theory of arthritis is a sound one.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.