Rheumatology treatments 'better than gold'

Retired rheumatologist Dr. Michael Lindamood saw the available treatments change immensely over his 44-year career. "Almost year by year, you could see new things develop," said Lindamood, who practiced at Blanchard Valley Medical Associates in Findlay from 1976 until his retirement in 2020. Rheumatology "was just getting started as a subspecialty" when Lindamood started his career. At first, rheumatoid arthritis was treated with gold shots. Lindamood explained that gold and other heavy metals had been used to treat infections since the 1920s and, by accident, were found to help treat rheumatoid arthritis. "One day there was a gold clinic" at the Ohio State University, where Lindamood went to medical school, with people coming in to get their gold shots. But, he said, some patients responded far better than others did to gold. Anti-inflammatory medications like ibuprofen came along in the 1970s. Prior to that, almost everybody with rheumatoid arthritis was on aspirin, with Lindamood noting that some were taking up to 14 to 16 tablets a day. In the mid-1980s came methotrexate, which had been used as a cancer treatment for some time but — again, accidentally — was discovered to also improve arthritis. Lindamood said his patients took a much smaller dose than cancer patients, with fewer side effects. "It worked definitely better than gold," he said. Biologic medications (genetically engineered proteins) for rheumatoid arthritis came out in the late 1990s. By the time Lindamood retired, rheumatology had "a lot more to offer," he said. By then, studies were conducted more rigorously than they had been to prove a medication's effectiveness and safety, and to keep track of side effects. "Looking back, gold never had close to the studies" that modern medications do, he said. Arthurs: 419-427-8494