PNEUMONIA CASES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 August 1938, Page 7

PNEUMONIA CASES

SUCCESS WITH NEW GROUP OF DRUGS. DEVELOPMENTS IN ENGLAND. Another and most remarkable success for the new group of drugs known collectively, if not accurately, as the "Sulphanilamide Group" is claimed by two medical men at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, who recount their experience in the “Lancet,” writes the medical correspondent of “The Times.”

The case in question would, even a few weeks ago, have been regarded as hopeless. The patient was a woman of 60 years, who was suffering from what is known as Type 111 pneumonia, a very severe form, especially in old persons. There was complete collapse of the left lung and also involvement of the right lung, and the general condition seemed to be desperate. But after some doses of a recent Sulphonamide derivative called May and Baker —“M and B” 693 —had been administered, improvement began. A fortnight after the onset of the attack the patient had so far recovered as to possess a normal pulse and temperature. It was observed during bacteriological examinations that the capsules which normally surround the pneumococci disappeared after the administration of M and B 693 began. The cocci were thus presumably deprived of their means of protecting themselves against the white blood corpuscles which are their natural foes. Whether or not this stripping away of the capusles of germs is the method of operation of all Sulphonamide derivatives is uncertain, but, as the “Lancet” points out, it has already been suggested that Prontosil acts in this way upon streptococci.

USE IN OTHER CASES. Two other cases of treatment of pneumonia by M and B 693 are recorded. In one of these a man aged 60 with extensive broncho-pneumonia due to Type XI pneumococcus was given the drug on the fourth day of his illness. His temperature fell to normal within twelve hours. In the other, a sufferer from diabetes, aged 34, received M and B 693 on the second day of an attack of lobar pneumonia due to Type I. The temperature fell to normal in forty-eight hours. It, was announced in the "Lancet” recently that M and B 693 had been used in a series of more than 100 cases at the Dudley Road Hospital, Birmingham, and that “the mortality has been very definitely lower than a similar number of control cases during that time, and toxic symptoms, even with large doses of the drug, have been conspicuously absent.” “Nothing,” the “Lancet” stated , recently, “in the astonishing therapeutic achievements of the past three years has carried more conviction than the power of Sulphanilamide to arrest streptococcal meningitis.” The power of the third member of the series Prontosil to control puerperal infection is now well known. Study indeed has marched from Prontosil to Sulphanilamide and is now marching from Sulphanilamide to M and B 693, the full name of which is 2- (p-Aminoben-zene-sulphonamido) Pyridine, which last compound seems to possess a wider range of activity than the other two and to be free from toxic effects. A NEW WEAPON. There cannot be much doubt that in M and B 693 the medical profession has acquired a new weapon of very great effectiveness. Until recently indeed puerperal fever, streptococcol meningitis, and severe pneumonia in old people were diseases of so desperate a character that recovery in any case was hailed as a phenomenon. A host of less serious conditions are now being treated with the new drugs. Speaking about his own experiences in this work, a distinguished bacteriologist stated recently: “It is much too good to be true; we can scarcely allow ourselves to believe it.” Incidentally, the possibility of disarming bacteria by stripping them of their capsules opens up an entirely new field of work, the tilling of which is likely to occupy research workers during many years! The discovery of the special powerse of the sulphanilamide group was made in Germany and was to some extent due to an accident. But the work lies in a line which leads back directly to the pioneer researches of Paul Ehrlich and his pupils.