Effective treatment of osteoarthritis with a 150 mg prolonged-release of diclofenac sodium.

A new oral dosage form of diclofenac sodium, enabling the single administration of the daily dose of 150 mg, has been tested for treatment of 20 patients suffering from osteoarthritis of the spine. A control group of 20 patients with the same diagnosis instead received 3 enteric-coated tablets/day, each containing 50 mg of the drug. Treatments lasted in both groups one month. Clinical efficacy was monitored by evaluating the changes in the disease's symptoms and signs (pain, cramps, alterations of function capacity, morning stiffness) and in some laboratory parameters (ESR, C-reactive protein, Rheuma test). Treatment tolerability was evaluated through the routine laboratory blood and urine tests, and by registering any complaint at the gastrointestinal level, as well as any adverse event. The two posology schemes were equally effective in favourably reducing the disease's clinical and laboratory manifestations. Also systemic and local tolerability were superimposable and on the whole good: only a few episodes of mild epigastralgia were reported (3 cases in each group), as expected during a treatment course with NSAIDs.