Medicine: Progress

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The hormone ACTH has been helpful in 1) finding out more about how the human body works, and 2) suggesting ways to find a treatment for such diseases as rheumatoid arthritis. For medical researchers using ACTH, Armour & Co. had good news last week. Its laboratories had:

¶ Prepared a form of ACTH 180 times as powerful as the standard preparation now in use;

¶ Produced two long-acting forms of the drug: Adactar, which can be given every two or three days instead of four times daily, and Duractar which may remain active in the body for as long as a week;

¶ Made progress toward isolating the hormone in pure form. Once it is isolated, chemists can tackle the still harder task of making it synthetically.