Talk:Melarsoprol

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Fact or Fiction

The phrasing "it is fatal in and of itself 10 percent of the time" and "arsenic in antifreeze" appear on "House," word for word. Is there any verifiable proof this is the case, or was this simply taken from the TV show? Jimzim66 04:10, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know much about the arsenic and antifreeze statement, but as for the death rate I'll change it back "a significant fraction" (see below) until we can get a better percentage. Scaper8 14:15, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I watched the episode again, and the phrase "It is fatal in and of itself..." is copied in the article, word for word. Just wanted to bring this up so TV show quotes arent being cited as canon. Jimzim66 05:42, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Jfdwolff, while I agree that U.S. government information is generally public domain, I think you're hasty in judging this to be pd. If you would look at the link from which the information derives, you'd notice that the bottom of the page ascribes a coypright to the drug information. I think if the U.S. government web site marks the info as copyrighted, we can't reasonably consider it public domain. If you have other information to the contrary, I'd gladly hear it. :-) Jwrosenzweig 17:44, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks JW, I was under the impression that MedlinePLUS was PD. Now this page can be written up properly. Well spotted, and a very good autumn to you :-) (see User_talk:Jfdwolff). JFW | T@lk 10:57, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Death rate

The 12% death rate given in the article appears to be on the high side.

This [1] suggests that the death rate from melarsoprol is rather lower than the 12% figure given in the article. According to this, the death rate was 6 deaths out of 250 in each of two experimental groups with N=250, a rate of 2.4%, with all deaths due to encephalopathy, with a rate of 14 out of 250 in each of the groups, a rate of 5.6%. That is to say, out of the 5.6% with encephalopathy, 43% died.

This report [2] gives the following figures:

The rates of encephalopathic syndromes ranged from 3.3 - 29.6% (average 8.7%) compared to the retrospective rates of 0 – 13% (average 8.3%). The case fatality rate of encephalopathic syndromes was 45% which is comparable to reported rates (range 30 – 80%). 67% of the fatalities were attributable to encephalopathic syndromes.

This suggests that roughly 45% * 9% = 4%-ish of patients died due to encephalopathic syndromes, and that the overall fatality rate was 4% / 67% = 6%-ish.

Changing to "a significant fraction".