To determine the outcomes in patients who receive more than one course of intramuscular gold therapy.
Gold clinic records of all patients who had received more than one course of gold at the Arthritis Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia were reviewed to extract clinical and laboratory data.
Between 1949 and 1992, 1148 patients received injectable gold in the gold clinic of the Arthritis Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia. Forty-two patients received 2 courses and 3 patients 3 courses of gold separated by intervals of greater than 8 months. Twenty-one patients were markedly improved when the first course of gold was discontinued. Twenty of these 21 patients experienced a similar marked improvement from a 2nd course of gold. Three patients who received 3 courses had marked improvement with each course. Only 1 patient who experienced marked improvement with the first course of gold failed to respond to a 2nd course.
In contrast to the published literature, our experience suggests that the response to the 2nd course of gold is similar to the response to the first in most patients with arthritis.