Hepatic Tolerance of Ethionamide.

American clinical investigators have been among the first to associate ethionamide with the development of jaundice and hepatotoxicity in tuberculous patients treated with regimens which, since 1959, have included ethionamide. During this same period, a total of 222 patients under the present writer's care have received regimens containing ethionamide. A review of the records has been undertaken to determine how many of these patients developed clinical jaundice, hepatic enlargement or tenderness, or biochemical evidence of liver disease. The results of this investigation are reported here. Because this hospital is a military installation, most of the patients studied were white males of the military age group. Most of them had primary pulmonary tuberculosis.