Calcium Paraaminosalicylate Hydrate

More than 50 years have passed since Tanabe Seiyaku Co., Ltd. (Tanabe) started producing PAS series (para-aminosalicy-late), which is one of the typical antituberculous agents. NIPPAS series, Tanabe's PAS was produced by the enormous efforts of Tanabe's researchers and engineers in the 1950s, and it made a great contribution to the remedy for many tuberculars. After that, the prominent progress of antituberculous agents, medical technology, and public hygiene dramatically decreased the member of tubercular patients, and usage of the PAS series was also on the decrease year by year. Most recently, tuberculars are unfortunately increasing gradually and the NIP-PAS series holds an important position as a prominent remedy for this disease. Therefore Tanabe still produces NIPPAS. This paper describes the historical process of NIPPAS production of Tanabe.

Pulmonary mycobacteriosis is usually caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Mycobacterium avium complex, or Mycobacterium kansasii. There are, however, other slow-growing mycobacteria which can cause pulmonary infection. Mycobacterium szulgai, first reported in 1972, is a scotochromogenic species which can affect human lungs, although human-to-human spread of infection is thought to be unlikely. We have recently treated three cases of middle-aged to elderly persons (45-87 year-old), two of them had underlying diseases (one with intrapulmonary and the other with extrapulmonary). All patients had constitutional symptoms (cough, sputum, dyspnea), and chest roentgenograms demonstrated either cavitation with scattered nodules or peripheral infiltrates predominantly in upper lobes, resembling pulmonary tuberculosis. In two cases, M. szulgai was identified by using DNA-DNA hybridization method. The in vitro susceptibility of M. szulgai to antimycobacterial drugs was better than that of M. avium complex, and it was resistant only to paraaminosalicylate, cycloserine, and partially to isoniazid. Pulmonary disease of three patients were successfully treated with a combination of multiple antimycobacterial agents including rifampin, ethambutol, isoniazid, or streptomycin.