The effect of a hormone of the adrenal cortex (17-hydroxy-11-dehydrocorticosterone; compound E) and of pituitary adrenocorticotropic hormone on rheumatoid arthritis.

The adrenal cortical hormone 17-hydroxy-11dehydrocorticosterone, hereinafter called " compound E" (Mason and others, 1938; Reichstein and Shoppee, 1943) has been administered to fourteen patients with severe or moderately severe rheumatoid arthritis. In each case improvement in clinical features and in sedimentation rates began to occur within a few days. When administration of the hormone was discontinued, the disease generally relapsed promptly. Essentially similar clinical results accompanied by various biochemical effects were obtained from the administration of the pituitary adrenocorticotrophic hormone to two patients. The rarity of these compounds presently and in the immediate future, and the limited scope of our preliminary data (especially regarding prolonged administration) make inappropriate now the use of the term " treatment " except in an investigative sense. This paper is presented, not as a clinicotherapeutic report, but as a study of certain physiologic effects which these new hormones exert on rheumatoid arthritis.