The orally administered antibiotics in the treatment of non-specific urethritis. II. Aureomycin (chlortetracycline).

THE small-scale reports so far published of the results obtained by aureomycin in the treatment of non-specific urethritis have not been discouraging. Thus, Finland et al. (1949) successfully treated two cas~s with this drug. Likewise of four patients treated by Findlay and Willcox (1949), three responded, and Harkness (1949) also claimed seven cures out of ten patients treated. Similarly Mc Vay et al. (1951) reported successful outcomes in eleven other cases. As part of a comparative study of different drugs in the treatment of this condition undertaken at St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, and King Edward VII Hospital, Windsor, 62 male patients with non-specific urethritis were treated with aureomycin with 16 failures within three post-treatment months, an overall success rate of 74.2 per cent. There were also 9 re-treatments with the same drug. In one patient the urethritis was complicated by epididymitis, and in another by a mild episode of Reiter's syndrome with keratosis blennorrhagica of the penis.