Promising PAS

U.S. physicians who have been skeptical about using PAS (para-aminosalicylic acid) to treat tuberculosis are being converted. Three doctors on the staff of the Arroyo Del Valle Sanatorium of Alameda County (Calif.) report in the current Stanford Medical Bulletin that 150 patients in the San Francisco Bay area have had PAS treatments with "very promising" results.

Most closely studied were the patients at Arroyo Del Valle. Of 22 of them who got the drug for more than two months, 16 showed moderate to marked improvement; five showed slight improvement. The one exception, whose condition was worse according to X rays, nevertheless seemed better in general health. The patients who were given PAS included some whose illness had defied other treatments, and some who were failing rapidly because their tubercle bacilli had begun to resist streptomycin.

PAS, the doctors report, has its most Striking effect in reducing fever, spitting, and the poisoning of the body by tubercle bacilli. It also gives the patient a sense of wellbeing. A gain in weight often results from the treatment: one tuberculosis patient, who had been in & out of hospitals for 20 years, put on 26 Ibs. in four months. Used with streptomycin, PAS is invaluable in keeping down the development of strains of germs which have learned to resist streptomycin. The drug, conclude the doctors, is so promising that it should be tested more widely.

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