Word: acth
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Duplicating Nature. From the pitui-tary's front lobe. Biochemist Li has isolated no fewer than five other hormones, including the enormously potent adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). Three other hormones he discovered are involved in the female reproductive cycle; finally there is the human growth hormone (HGH, or somatotropin), which may yet prove to be the most important...
...others ferreted out the detailed structure of ACTH by complex and exquisitely delicate analytic processes. Then he set out to duplicate nature, or even improve on it. by making ACTH in the laboratory. The natural hormone contains 39 amino acids in a chain. Dr. Li made chains of 17 and 19 acids, and in some ways those short chains are almost as potent as the whole natural hormone; in other ways they are still more potent...
...shotgun and often has a variety of undesirable effects, stimulating the adrenal glands, for example, to produce excesses of other body-controlling hormones. The synthetic short-chain kind offers doctors the hope that it may be used to achieve a specific result in treating a specific disease. Manufactured ACTH can be used to reduce fat stores in the body and possibly to stimulate red-cell production...
Extracts from animal glands (even some from the pituitary, such as ACTH) are easy to get and work well as replacement for many human hormones. Growth hormone is the exception for which the human body apparently insists on its own brand. (Monkeys' hormones would probably work, but the glands are too small.) Since HGH cannot yet be synthesized, the only source of supply is man. A few medical examiners seek authorization to remove the pea-sized pituitary at autopsies on both adults and stillborn babies. The tiny glands are sent to one of three university laboratories. There, after five...
...season in late fall, infectious hepatitis is mysteriously appearing and disappearing in city and hamlet, hopscotching the map in a manner that leaves epidemiologists at a loss for cogent explanation. Equally frustrated are the physicians who are trying to treat it, using gamma globulin to help prevent it. and ACTH and cortisone-like drugs to treat the symptoms in some severe cases...