[A topical solution of 40% idoxuridine in dimethyl sulfoxide compared to oral acyclovir in the treatment of herpes zoster. A double-blind multicenter clinical trial].

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide, non-peptide solvent).

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

Patients of both sexes older than 18 years, with a HZ of less than 4 days were selected.

Patients with otic or ophthalmic zoster, serious concomitant illness or pregnant or breast-feeding women were excluded.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide, non-peptide solvent) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide, non-peptide solvent), so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide, non-peptide solvent) group a baseline to be compared against.

Following a double dummy design, the patients received at random topical IDU and oral placebo, or oral ACV and topical placebo.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Acyclovir, Administration, Topical, Dimethyl Sulfoxide, Herpes Zoster, Idoxuridine, Solutions and Spain.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide, non-peptide solvent).

Results are reported in around 4 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 1992 (Medicina clinica), a journal based in Spain.

More context: the DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide, non-peptide solvent) compound page, all human trials.