Effectiveness of tolmetin in rheumatoid arthritis: evaluation by means of a new method.

Twelve patients with rheumatoid arthritis were treated in a random double-blind crossover study with Tolmetin (1,200 mg/day) and Paracetamol (2,000 mg/day). Each drug was administered for 4 days. A three-days wash-out period was fixed between the administrations of the first drug and that of the second one. The efficacy of the treatments was investigated by self-evaluation of the grip strength expressed as mmHg.h during the day. Tolmetin proved significantly more effective than Paracetamol and induced a significant increase of grip strength, as compared to the baseline values, from the first day of administration. The self-evaluation of the grip strength proved a simple and useful method to evaluate, within an extremely short time and on few groups of patients, the effectiveness of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in rheumatoid arthritis.