CLINICAL AND BIOCHEMICAL STUDY OF REMISSIONS IN NONSPECIFIC ARTHRITIS: From the Medical Department and the Pathological Laboratories, Bronx Hospital.

IT IS WELL known that nonspecific arthritis is a disease which is characterized by relapses and remissions.¹ It is also generally accepted that whereas there is no specific curative agent for this disease, there are many measures which hasten remissions in both rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis.² As Hench³ recently stated in discussing the use of gold therapy in rheumatoid arthritis, a remission may be obtained by this method in six months in a case in which it otherwise might require six years. Using measures other than chrysotherapy, a smaller percentage of remissions has been reported after the use of such diverse treatments as hyperthermia with typhoid vaccine,⁴ hypervitaminosis with massive doses of activated ergosterol (viosterol),⁵ bismuth therapy,⁶ low carbohydrate diets,⁷ administration of cinchophen,⁸ starvation,⁹ administration of streptococcus vaccine,¹⁰ administration of foreign protein,¹¹ bee venom therapy¹² and even anesthesia.¹³

Of striking significance is the fact that the highest percentage of remissions