Hereditary muscular dystrophy in chickens of the New Hampshire strain was treated with penicillamine from the 9th day after hatching to the 425th day. The adult maintenance dose for males was 50 mg/kg per day and for females, 13-65 mg/kg per day. In avian dystrophy, deterioration of the muscle fibers is evidenced in the 2nd mo by an inability of the birds to rise after falling on their backs an...

A 40 year old woman with rheumatoid arthritis developed pure red cell aplasia after treatment with D-penicillamine 500 mg/day. D-Penicillamine was stopped and short term treatment with steroids resulted in complete recovery of bone marrow.

Although there is good evidence that D-penicillamine can induce polymyositis, the exact pathogenic mechanism remains unclear. We report two patients with psoriatic arthritis and primary biliary cirrhosis respectively, who developed polymyositis while receiving D-penicillamine treatment for their primary diseases. Whether D-penicillamine treatment was the sole cause of polymyositis or acted as a...

Life-table analysis was applied to the records of 317 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) treated with sulphasalazine (SAS), 201 treated with sodium aurothiomalate (gold), and 163 with penicillamine. They comprised all those treated in our department with these drugs between January 1973 and July 1984. Risks of treatment termination for all reasons were similar for each drug at five years (...

Previous reports from this laboratory have shown that penicillamine effectively reduces serum digoxin levels and is a clinically useful drug in correcting digoxin intoxication. To elucidate further the antidigitalis effects of penicillamine a prospective study was undertaken in 10 children aged 4--14 years with congestive heart failure. Plasma and intracellular erythrocyte concentrations of sod...

In most normal human sera the addition of penicillamine to a final concentration of 0-2 mmol/l and subsequent dialysis caused a slight reduction in serum haemolytic complement (CH50). At 200 mmol/l, CH50 activity was no longer demonstrable. Even high concentrations of penicillamine were needed to inhibit the ability of immunoglobulin to fix complement to preformed or forming immune complexes. T...

BACKGROUND Wilson's disease (WD) evolves rapidly and is fatal if untreated. The treatment of WD patients with mild liver disease is not clearly defined. To address this issue, we evaluated long-term outcomes of three treatment regimens (D-penicillamine, zinc or both) in patients diagnosed in childhood. METHODS We retrospectively evaluated efficacy, compliance and reasons for treatment discont...

After initial promotion of copper excretion with D-penicillamine, the effect of oral zinc sulphate (3 X 150 mg/day, loading dose; 3 X 100 mg/day, maintenance dose) in two children with clinically stable Wilson's disease was evaluated after completion of three years' treatment. The course, judged by clinical, biochemical, and histological parameters was satisfactory in both. The urinary copper c...

The Multicentre Trial Group (1973) showed that penicillamine was superior to placebo in a doubleblind trial against placebo. In this trial penicillamine was compared with gold. There are three reasons why a double-blind trial of penicillamine and gold was not attempted; first, gold is given by injection and penicillamine orally;. secondly, both drugs have distinctive side effects which might 'u...