There are many experimental and clinical investigations on Enviomycin (EVM). In these papers, EVM is reported to have an almost equal clinical effectiveness to Viomycin (VM) and have less side effects than conventional antituberculosis drugs in the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB).
EVM was administered to a total of 81 patients with PTB, consisted of 73 re-treatment cases and 8 initial treatment cases, to whom Streptomycin (SM) could not be given either because of resistance to SM or development of tinnitus after SM injection. Sputum and serum levels of EVM were also assayed in 10 cases with PTB after intramuscular administration of 1.0g EVM.
The results obtained were as follows;
1. Negative conversion rate of tubercle bacilli in sputum was 100% in initial treatment cases and 27.3% in re-treatment cases. However, in re-treatment cases who were treated with EVM in combination with two other potential drugs, such as Rifampicin and Ethambutol, the rate was 66.7%. EVM was not effective in re-treatment cases when combined with non-potential drugs and the negative conversion rate was only 14.7%.
2. None showed worsening of hearing disturbance in spite of the fact that EVM was used for cases who showed initially slight hearing impairment.
3. Eight cases showed side effects; i.e. tinnitus in 2, skin eruption in 1, a slight elevation of serum transaminase in 2 and eosinophilia in 3.
4. EVM was penetrated into the sputum of patients with PTB at high level.
5. Two out of 81 cases studied were dropped out because of skin eruption and tinnitus after EVM injection.
