Chrysotherapy

To the Editor.—  In the March Archives (139:343-346, 1979), Gibbons has nicely reviewed the usual complications of therapy with gold salts. He emphasizes the necessity of carefully monitoring patients to detect and prevent reversible complications. We wish to call attention to some less common complications of gold therapy seen in a busy rheumatologic practice.Partial or complete hair loss does occur in patients treated with gold. This is a rare but distressing complication. It is usually reversible with cessation of gold therapy.Gibbons mentions that fever may complicate gold-induced leukopenia. We have seen gold-induced fever in the absence of changes in the complete blood cell count. Gold reaction must be in the differential diagnosis of all unexplained fevers in patients receiving gold therapy.A distal sensory peripheral neuropathy may develop in patients receiving gold therapy. This is distinguished from the neuropathy that occasionally complicates rheumatoid arthritis only by its tendency