Word: acth
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Outstanding among the substances which regulate body functions are hormones, and one of the most powerful of them is ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone). Secreted by the pituitary gland at the base of the brain, it directs a pair of glands above the kidneys in the production of about 30 other hormones...
Virtually all that has been learned so far about ACTH's awesome power to change the innermost workings of the body was published last week in a single volume, Clinical ACTH (Blakiston; $6.50). Normally it would have taken years for 52 such reports to seep into scattered medical journals. Dr. John R. Mote, director of the Armour Laboratories, which produce most of the world's pitifully small supply of ACTH, collected the papers, with 421 illustrations, so that researchers could have all the available data in one package...
Armour is conducting its own research in the hope of increasing the supply, said Mote. If the complex structure of the ACTH molecule can be determined, he hopes to be able to stop making it in minute quantities from hogs' heads, and start to synthesize it by the hogshead. Until then, the millions of sarthritics and the countless sufferers from gout and a dozen other diseases must live in hope...
...slave hormones whose flow can be speeded by ACTH is cortisone, formerly known as Compound E (TIME, June 13). Like its master, cortisone almost always relieves the symptoms of crippling rheumatoid arthritis in a few injections, but, again like its master, it must be used continuously or the condition recurs...
Cortisone is even scarcer than ACTH. Merck & Co., who make it, in 37 tedious steps, from the bile of butchered cattle, expect to produce little more than 1½ ounces a week for the rest of the year. Last week it was announced that henceforth cortisone will be doled out to suitable hospitals and research institutions through a committee of the National Academy of Sciences. And Merck has stopped giving it away: the price now is $60 for a 300-milligram vial ($5,670 an ounce...