Clinical experience with tenoxicam: a review.

Tenoxicam, a new non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agent (NSAID) with a long half-life, has been evaluated in a series of nine clinical studies over the last five years. Early studies against naproxen in osteoarthrosis (OA) and against ibuprofen in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) suggested the drug was efficacious in both of these conditions. A series of faecal blood loss studies showed that the drug produced less gastrointestinal blood loss than aspirin and comparable blood loss to piroxicam. Comparisons of tenoxicam and piroxicam in OA and ankylosing spondylitis (AS) showed both drugs to be approximately equally efficacious. A pharmacokinetic study showed a half-life for tenoxicam of 45 h in synovial fluid when the half-life was 42 h in plasma. A single and multiple oral dose pharmacokinetic study of tenoxicam in the elderly showed no progressive accumulation with peak plasma levels of 2.6 micrograms/ml after the single dose and 12.4 micrograms/ml at steady state.