Background The research aimed the development of a prospective investigation on the efficacy of the rofecoxib treatment in inflammatory arthropathies patients.

Our previous expertize enabled us to suspect that there might be some consistent effects of the rofecoxib of the inflammatory disease class.

Objectives Consequently the main objective of our research was to point out the influences of rofecoxib as an alternative treatment in the inflammatory disease class.

Methods Basically, the method consists of taking measurements and surveying the effects of the rofecoxib treatment on patients during a two week time interval.

The study involved a 55 patients target group with the following structure: acute gout present at 15 of them, 19 patients had seronegative spondylarthropathies, 7 suffering of psoriatic arthritis, 10 of them presenting rheumatoid arthritis and 2 patients diagnosticated as systemic sclerosis associated arthritis.

The survey assumed the pain score measurement in terms of an analogical pain scale from 0 (no pain) to 10 (very severe pain). The measurements were taken at 48 h, 72 h, 7 days and 14 days following the initial moment when the therapy with rofecoxib started.

Results Our results can be summarised as follows: very high efficacy in acute gout (50 mg in the first day, then 25 mg/day) together with significant decrease of the 48 h pain score. Also, good efficacy can be reported in case of seronegative spondylarthropathies, psoriatic arthritis and systemic sclerosis associated arthritis (25 mg/day 7 days, followed by 12.5 mg/day) but for patients suffering of rheumatoid arthritis the efficacy can be considered as being almost satisfactory (25 mg/day). However, the investigation of the chronic arthropathies patients continued for about two more months, and no digestive, hepatic or renal adverse reactions were reported while the whole therapeutic benefit was preserved.

Conclusion We can conclude on this basis that the results confirmed most of our expectations but the experiment allowed us to refine our a priori hypothesis.