Aminopterin ("rat poison") for psoriasis?

In a bizarre twist, psoriasis has found its way into the story surrounding the pet food recall. (First, our hearts go out to all the pet owners who have lost pets or who are filled with anxiety because of this pet food recall.)

An early alleged cause of the animal fatalities was aminopterin, referred to in news accounts as a rodent poison. While experts now believe the culprit was the chemical melamine, the attention on aminopterin led Syntrix Biosystems to issue a statement asserting that aminopterin was not the cause of the pet fatalities and was in fact a very promising drug for psoriasis and other serious diseases, first used for a time in the 1950s and 1960s.

During the period Aminopterin was marketed, the agent was used off-label to safely treat over 4,000 patients with psoriasis in the United States, producing dramatic clearing of lesions. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has recently awarded Syntrix Biosystems $800,000 to support the clinical testing of Aminopterin in psoriasis.

Old scientific papers actually refer to aminopterin as a precursor or predecessor to methotrexate, the Korean War-era psoriasis treatment that is still widely used today.

So what's old may be new again. Syntrix may bring aminopterin back to market, giving us psoriasis patients a chance to tell our friends we take "rat poison" to alleviate our psoriasis symptoms. (Syntrix does not believe aminopterin is actually used as a rodenticide.)