Chest
Original Research: SarcoidosisDouble-Blind, Randomized Trial of Dexmethylphenidate Hydrochloride for the Treatment of Sarcoidosis-Associated Fatigue
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
All study participants had biopsy-confirmed sarcoidosis with consistent clinical features for > 2 years1 and complained of chronic fatigue with no other identified causes. Patients were excluded from the study if they had uncontrolled hypertension or cardiac arrhythmias. Maintenance systemic therapy without significant change was administered throughout the study. Patients provided written informed consent of a protocol approved by the University of Cincinnati Institutional Review Board.
Results
The study was performed between June 2006 and January 2007. Forty-four sarcoidosis patients were screened for the study (Fig 2). The two major reasons for not participating were exclusion criteria (not receiving stable therapy or clinically significant cardiac arrythmias) or not available for the 20 weekly visits required by the study. Ten patients were enrolled, and all completed all aspects of the study. The enrolled patients had a median age of 52 years (range, 39 to 74 years). Eight of the
Discussion
Fatigue is a common complaint expressed by many patients with chronic diseases. In one study3 of unselected sarcoidosis patients, fatigue was noted in > 70% of patients, compared to only 20% of a control population. This high frequency has been reported in other sarcoidosis populations.216 As in other chronic diseases, including cancer, the cause of the fatigue can be multifactorial. Fatigue is not associated with most other clinical markers of disease activity in sarcoidosis.3 However,
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2020, Contemporary Clinical Trials CommunicationsCitation Excerpt :A further aim is to assess subjective clinical endpoints relating to disease-specific symptoms. For instance, fatigue is among the most common and disabling symptoms associated with sarcoidosis, which is often refractory to conventional sarcoidosis treatments [16,25], and there is reason to believe that nicotine treatment will attenuate these symptoms [18,26,27]. Finally, we will determine the safety and tolerability of nicotine therapy for patients with pulmonary sarcoidosis.
The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
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