With the report of Page in 19511 on the use of quinacrine in the treatment of chronic discoid lupus erythematosus and the subsequent reports of Goldman and others2 and Pillsbury and Jacobson3 in 1953 and 1954 on the successful use of the less toxic and more esthetically acceptable chloroquine, it has become clear that the therapy of this disease needs reevaluation. Since no dependable data are available on the natural course of lupus erythematosus, the logical approach to the evaluation of new drugs is a careful comparison of results obtained with them and results accumulated in the use of older, standard medications. The purpose of this paper is to compare chloroquine with gold sodium thiosulfate in the treatment of chronic discoid lupus erythematosus.
Five points of comparison were considered note-worthy:
Number of successes and failures
Rates at which clinical remission took place