A comparison of alprazolam, gefarnate and their combination in treatment of peptic ulcer patients--an application of life table analysis.

One hundred and thirty-nine patients with endoscopically confirmed peptic ulcers (gastric and duodenal) entered a double blind comparative evaluation of alprazolam (1.2 mg/day), gefarnate (300 mg/day) and their combination in treatment of peptic ulcer. Healing of ulcers was confirmed by endoscopic examinations. For evaluation of the treatment effect, the "life table" method was applied to the analysis of the data. The results revealed that ulcer healing with the combination was faster by two weeks than that with alprazolam or gefarnate alone. The difference did not reach the statistical significance in all the subjects who fulfilled the entry criteria. There was, however, a statistical difference between treatments in the patients having manifest psychic symptoms such as anxiety, insomnia and depressive mood (p less than 0.05 by generalized Kruskal-Wallis test and p less than 0.1 by Logrank test). The rate of patients who had psychic symptoms before entry and had not been cured of ulcers at the 4th week of treatment was 61% on the combination treatment as compared to 96% on the gefarnate treatment and 93% on the alprazolam treatment.