Pharmacokinetics of reduced d-penicillamine in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

✍ Scribed by Michael Butler; George Carruthers; Manfred Harth; David Freeman; John Percy; Dallas Rabenstein

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1982
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 503 KB
• Volume: 25
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0004-3591
• DOI: 10.1002/art.1780250120

✦ Synopsis

Penicillamine (pp dimethylcysteine, 3 mercaptovaline) is a trifunctional amino acid with carboxyl, amino, and sufhydryl groups. The D-isomer is a remittive agent of similar efficacy to gold in the treatment of persistent rheumatoid arthritis (I).

Despite the widespread use of the drug, little information is available about the pharmacokinetics of D-penicillamine, largely due to the lack of a sensitive, specific, and rapid method of analysis in biologic fluids and tissues. The recent development of an electrochemical assay with these characteristics (2) has enabled us to study the pharmacokinetics of D-penicillamine in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

Materials and Methods. Observations were made on 13 patients with definite or classic rheumatoid arthritis by the American Rheumatism Association criteria ( 3 ) . The patients (10 women and 3 men), aged 30-69 years, had taken D-penicillamine for at least 3 months, and all had shown an apparent clinical response to the drug. The daily dose was 750 mg/day (6 patients), 500 mg/day (4 patients), and 250 mg/day (3 patients). D-penicillamine was taken as a single dose at