Medicine: Hormone & Foe

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Physiologists believe that in many cases high blood pressure is caused by hormones which tighten blood vessels and interfere with the normal flow of body fluids. A University of Pennsylvania researcher now reports that he has identified one of them, has had promising results with extra doses of the pressure-raising hormone itself.

Dr. John Quintin Griffith Jr., and colleagues at Penn's Medical School clinic, discovered several years ago that the blood serum of some patients with high blood pressure contained a pituitary hormone which slows up the secretion of urine. A synthetic preparation of the hormone, called pitressin, was found to have a peculiar property: injected into a patient, it reduces urine secretion at first, but after a few days increases it.

Dr. Griffith's explanation: pitressin may stimulate the body to produce an antihormone which neutralizes the hormone responsible for urine suppression and high blood pressure. As a test, he gave pitressin injections to 63 patients for several months. Result: half his patients improved; in some, blood pressure dropped to normal, stayed normal after injections stopped.