ABSTRACT
Forty patients with duodenal ulceration were treated with cimetidine for eight weeks, randomly allocated to a Q.I.D. [1g daily] or B.I.D. [800mg daily] regimen. Ten patients were lost to follow-up. Thirty patients completed eight weeks of treatment and 27 of these were symptom-free. Two patients on the B.I.D. and one patient on the Q.I.D. regimen failed to heal by eight weeks, though they had some improvement in symptoms and on endoscopy their ulcers were smaller. The drug was well tolerated and no serious side-effects were recorded. Routine laboratory tests revealed no persistent abnormalities. These findings are similar to the results of European studies and support the conclusion that the B.I.D. dosage of cimetidine is as effective as the Q.I.D. regimen in healing duodenal ulceration. Compliance with B.I.D. dosage was better than that with the Q.I.D. regimen, though the difference did not reach statistical significance