Aurothioglucose
chemical compound
Aurothioglucose, also known as gold thioglucose, is a chemical compound with the formula AuSC6H11O5. This derivative of the sugar glucose was formerly used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.
History
Throughout history, gold was used to cure diseases, although the efficacy was not established. In 1935, gold drugs were reported to be effective for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Although many patients reacted positively to the drug, gold thioglucose was not uniformly effective.
Only one gold drug remains in active clinical use for this purpose in the United States: auranofin, sodium aurothiomalate (gold sodium thiomalate) and aurothioglucose were discontinued by their manufacturers in 2019 due to gold shortages, and the rising cost of gold.
In 2001, aurothioglucose was withdrawn from the Dutch market, where it had been the only injectable gold preparation available since 1943, forcing hospitals to change medication for a large number of patients to aurothiomalate. The drug had been in use for more than 70 years, and four years later the reasons for its sudden disappearance remained unclear.
It was discontinued from the US market in 2019, along with sodium aurothiomalate, leaving only generic Auranofin as the only gold salt on the US market.
Medicinal chemistry
Gold thioglucose features gold in the oxidation state of +I, like other gold thiolates.
“Aurothioglucose” enters the record as chemical compound. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Aurothioglucose, chemical and compound can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4072449. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1935, 2019, 2001 and 1943.
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This entry incorporates text from “Aurothioglucose” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.