A recent study in the medical journal, Clinical Therapeutics, shows that oral gold pills are a safe and effective treatment for some types of arthritis.
Arthritis means that a person's joints and muscles hurt.
The first line treatments for rheumatoid arthritis include aspirin and the non-steroidals such as ibuprofin, Anaprox, Indocin, Motrin and so forth. These medications help to relieve pain but do nothing to stop the progressive destruction of joints. For the last 70 years doctors have used gold injections to slow the joint damage caused by rheumatoid arthritis, but injected gold causes many severe side effects such as liver and kidney damage and lowered white and red blood cell counts. This recent study from Japan shows that gold pills are relatively safe and can help to prevent joint destruction in rheumatoid arthritis. A person takes 3 mg tablets of auranofin twice a day and must be monitored monthly with blood tests.