Abstract
A newly developed anti-schistosomal drug, EMBAY 8440 (Praziquantel), by E. Merck and Bayer A. G., a marked characteristic of which consisted in the only one day administration per os, needed a tolerance test to know the side-effect in patients of schistosomiasis japonica by double blind method.
By treating these patients with 20 mg/kg dose, side-effects increased remarkably when the dose came to three times a day. The major side-effects were two, i.e., subjective complaints on the central nervous system such as mild headache or drowsiness, and a transient mild anemia in small number of cases.
However, in the evaluation of the tolerance test, there was found no poor case. The number of cases evaluated as good in the group of the true drug was significantly larger than that in the placebo group, although the number of the excellent cases was smaller in the group of the true drug than in the placebo group.
Therefore, authors concluded this remedy was clinically usable, if an attention was given to the subjective symptoms and the hemopoietic function.
The significance of results above, is that they confirmed the basis for wider applications of the drug to patients of schistosomiasis in the future.
