[Clinical and laboratory findings concerning at first dietary and afterwards cimetidine treatment of acute intermittent porphyria].

Clinical symptoms and laboratory findings were assessed in three women with acute intermittent porphyria. After 15 days of pharmacologic washout and free diet (time 0), the patients were give a well balanced normocaloric diet for 7 days (time 1), followed by 7 days of high carbohydrate normocaloric diet (time 2); on days 15 to 21 (time 3) well balanced normocaloric diet was given, and finally on days 22 to 28 (time 4) to the well balanced normocaloric diet cimetidine (0.4 g twice daily) was added. On days 3, 5, and 7 of times 1-4 the following porphyrin precursors were determined: ALA, PBG, total uroporphyrin, total coproporphyrin, and total porphyrin. At times 1 and 3, high values were found while levels dropped to normal during times 2 and 4. During times 1 and 3, patients complained of headache, insomnia and anxiety; during time 2, all patients complained of anxiety and only one suffered from insomnia. Finally, during time 4, all patients had only slight anxiety. Untoward effects of cimetidine were not observed in any of the patients.