Effects of acupuncture in bronchial asthma: preliminary communication.

Twenty patients randomly assigned to an experimental and a control group participated in a double blind study to assess the effectiveness of acupuncture in bronchial asthma, using the peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) as an index of bronchial patency. All patients in the control group showed a significant improvement in their PEFR while only 3 patients in the treated group showed an improvement. A subjective improvement and a reduction in drug dosages were observed in both groups. It is concluded that acupuncture has a placebo effect in bronchial asthma.

Sodium valproate in trigeminal neuralgia.

Sodium valproate, which has been recently introduced for the treatment of epilepsy, was tried in 20 patients with trigeminal neuralgia. Six out of 20 patients had no attacks for six months to 18 months while, in three patients, the frequency and severity of attacks were reduced by at least 50%. Four patients responded well when sodium valproate was used in combination with other drugs. Six patients showed little or no response while one patient showed poor tolerance to sodium valproate.

Minimum information needed by prescribers.

The prescriber needs adequate and concise information about each product that he uses, to allow him to obtain optimal effects while minimising harm. Neither the present UK data sheets nor their equivalents in other countries have succeeded in providing such information clearly or completely. This paper develops the proposals on the arrangement of drug information made in the WHO report "The selection of essential drugs." Three sets of minimum information (on tetracycline, propranolol, and aspirin) which illustrate this approach were compared with the manufacturers' data sheets: the latter were incomplete. The information content of our proposals was worked out with a group of clinical pharmacologists, general practitioners, and specialists, and we suggest that this approach should be extended to other drugs.

Package inserts for prescribed medicines: what minimum information do patients need?

The information a patient needs about a prescribed medicine can be determined by considering what responsibilities he can assume in relation to taking medicine. When the medicine has been dispensed the patient needs to know how to take the drug; how to store the drug; how it is expected to help; and how to recognise problems and what to do about them. A guide was designed to specify what information is required to meet these needs. Using this guide, a set of minimum information on tetracycline was prepared that aimed at being brief, specific, and readable. The best format for the information remains to be determined. Since leaflets produced by professional organisations are generally unsuitable for these purposes, information sets should be put together by small independent groups consisting of clinical pharmacologists, clinicians, pharmacists, and consumers. Each country should produce its own sets, adapting model sets to the circumstances of local practice.

A comparative trial of co-trimoxazole and chloramphenicol in thyphoid and paratyphoid fever.

A comparative trial of co-trimoxazole and chloramphenicol was carried out on 91 patients, 57 having typhoid fever and 34 cases having paratyphoid fever. Co-trimoxazole is an effective drug in the treatment of enteric fevers with respect to clinical cure, absence of relapses and the mild nature of short term toxic drug effects. Unlike some of the earlier reports, treatment failure or non-responsiveness to the drug occurred in just under 10 per cent of the cases and would constitute a drawback of therapy with co-trimoxazole. This feature was not observed in the patients receiving chloramphenicol. The excretion of Salmonellae after drug therapy was more common with chloramphenicol than with co-trimoxazole, again indicating the value of the latter drug in the treatment of enteric fevers.

Clonazepam in the treatment of choreiform activity.

In a limited study, clonazepam, a new benzodiazepine derivative, has been found to be effective in suppressing choreiform movements in three patients with Huntington's chorea, three patients with non-familial chorea, and in one patient with senile chorea. In two patients with chorea of doubtful aetiology the response was not very satisfactory. A simple method was used to assess objectively the effect on choreiform movements. The effective dose varied from 3-5 to 5-5 mg a day. The drug was well tolerated by most of the patients.