24 Hour Intragastric Acidity and Single Night-Time Dose of Three H2-Blockers

A Multicenter, Randomized, Double-Blind Study Comparing Famotidine with Cimetidine in the Treatment of Active Duodenal Ulcer Disease

“…The healing rates obtained with famotidine in this study are similar to those reported by other authors [23][24][25].…”

Continuous 24-Hour Intragastric pH Monitoring in the Evaluation of the Effect of a Nightly Dose of Famotidine, Ranitidine and Placebo on Gastric Acidity of Patients with Duodenal Ulcer

“…These results confirm previous investiga tions on the potent antisecretory activity of ranitidine [8,16,19] and the more recently available famotidine [24,25], Although the two H2 antagonists do not graphically present important differences be tween their antisecretory effects and the AUC of their 24-hour profiles are similar, continuous 24-hour intragastric monitoring, on the other hand, clearly shows that famot idine sharply increases pH values earlier than ranitidine (about 1.5 vs. 3 h after bed time administration) and ceases its antise cretory action later than ranitidine (about at 11.30 a.m. vs. 10 a.m.). Thus the duration of famotidine action is 12 h against 9 h of ranit idine.…”

“…Onset and duration of the famotidine action, however, were respectively earlier and longer lasting (12 vs. about 9 h) than those of ranitidine. Famotidine was also significantly superior (p ~ 0) to ranitidine in keeping intragastric pH at high values (especially those comprised between 6 and 8 pH units), although theoretically equipotent doses of the two H2 antagonists were used.Recent clinical trials [1][2][3][4][5][6] and studies on the control of 24-hour gastric acidity and nocturnal acid output [7,8] using a single bedtime dose of H2 blockers have shown that this regimen is as effective as a double dose or even a more frequent daily dosing schedule in inhibiting gastric acid secretion and ensuring ulcer healing.Of these drugs, famotidine has only re cently been introduced into clinical practice [9][10][11][12], This new H2 antagonist is highly spe cific, slowly dissociable and has been shown to be 32 times more potent than cimetidine and about 9 times more potent than raniti dine on a weight basis, when orally adminis tered [ 13], Recently, continuous 24-hour intragast ric pH recording has been proposed for the evaluation of antisecretory drugs [14][15][16] instead of the conventional long-term naso gastric hourly sampling [7,[17][18][19], Contin uous monitoring has been shown to have a good reproducibility [14][15][16]20]: besides, a close correlation has been observed between pH values indicated by intraluminal elec trodes and those measured on simulta neously aspirated gastric juice samples [16,21,22], …”

A Multicenter, Randomized, Double-Blind Study Comparing a Daily Bedtime Administration of Famotidine and Ranitidine in Short-Term Treatment of Active Duodenal Ulcer

“…In a study comparing the potency of fa motidine (on an equimolar basis) with the other H2 receptor antagonists in patients with Zollinger-Ellison syndrome, famotidine was 32-fold more potent than cimetidine and 9-fold more potent than ranitidine [23], In the same study, the duration of action of famotidine was 30% longer than that of both cimetidine and ranitidine given in equipotent doses, an observation that confirms pre vious data [14,24,25], On the other hand, famotidine has a very good safety profile and does not inhibit the oxidative metabolism of drugs by interacting with the hepatic cytochrome P450 system, and does not show antiandrogenic activity [27].…”