Word: acth
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...ACTH and cortisone have been tried on patients in both Boston and Manhattan; they do not look promising. At half a dozen clinics, patients are getting up-to-date physiotherapy to make the disease less crippling. Federal funds are being used to continue some long-range research which the Society started. No pat answers are in sight. Victims of multiple sclerosis have to be satisfied with an assurance of something less: their disease is at last getting the attention it deserves...
...ulcer victims have had their vagus nerve severed by surgery to break the chain of cause & effect. It usually worked, but sometimes the ulcers recurred-presumably because mental stress had found a new route to the stomach, but how, nobody knew. Lately physicians have noticed that heavy doses of ACTH or cortisone may start old ulcers up again...
...Boston's Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, where Gushing did much of his work, a team of researchers headed by Dr. Seymour Gray put two & two together. This undesirable effect of ACTH and cortisone on ulcer patients, they reasoned, revealed a second pathway by which emotional stress reaches the stomach: through the pituitary and adrenal glands and their hormones. To test their theory, they gave ACTH to patients whose vagus nerve had been cut, and found that it made their poor stomachs react just as if the vagus nerve had been intact, i.e., the stomachs became overactive, secreted too much...
Naturally, say Gray and his colleagues, their tests indicate that precautions must be taken in ordering ACTH and cortisone for ulcer patients. They may also lead to a new understanding of how ulcers start and how they should be treated...
...drugs alter the course of the disease. But U.S. troops get far better care than the first Japanese victims: infusions of glucose and vitamins, and sometimes ACTH or cortisone for shock. Transfusions of blood from convalescent patients, given to victims in the early stages, seem to speed their recovery. This strengthens the belief that the fever is caused by a virus, and that a convalescent's blood contains antibodies manufactured during the illness...