Abstract
Clinical efficacy of low-dose content tablet Buccilamine (Rimatil (R) 50, Bc 50) was evaluated in 58 patients with active rheumatoid arthritis (RA), 24 of whom had ever experi-enced adverse reactions against regular-dose tablet Bucillamine (Rimatil (R) 100, Bc 100) . Most of the remaining 34 patients had either demonstrated untoward side-effects against or shown no beneficial response to other kinds of anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) .
Initial mean dose of Bucillamine was 59.1mg per day; the mean time span of the treatment with this drug was 23.7 weeks.
At the 16th week of this clinical study, 48% of the patients showed moderate or marked improvement and about 88% of them demonstrated no side-effects, while at the end of this investigation, moderate or marked improvement was observed in 60% and 21% experienced adverse reactions. Clinical parameters, such as duration of morning stiffness, ESR values, grip strength, number of swollen or tender joints and Lansbury's activity index tended to show very favorable move after four to eight weeks of the treatment. Of those 24 patients who had a history of adverse reactions to higher dose of Bucillamine (Bc 100), 17 remained free from side-effects in this study, while more than half (53%) of those who ever demonstrated untoward reactions to other kinds of DMARDs developed side-effects with this low-dose of Bucillamine.
Although the final global utility rate of this drug was somewhat low (46.6%) among this group of RA patients, the figure is fairly reasonable one, considering the lower content of active ingredient cotained in the tablet. Bc 50 tablet is considered quite useful for instituting more flexible dosage set-up in RA patients, including those who ever developed undesirable side-effects against higher dose of this drug, Bc 100.
