ORAL USE OF CORTISONE ACETATE

Abstract

The necessity for intramuscular injections has made patients treated with cortisone acetate dependent on physicians or others for their medication and has served as a disadvantage to the use of the hormone. Its clinical application would be easier and less expensive if cortisone acetate could be employed effectively by mouth, as can certain other steroid compounds (including several estrogenic substances, ethisterone [anhydrohydroxyprogesteronel and methyltestosterone). Early experimental work indicated that cortisone extracted from adrenal cortical tissue was physiologically active when fed to small laboratory animals.¹ This suggested that cortisone acetate might be effective, to some degree, when administered by mouth to human subjects. Because steroid hormones absorbed from the alimentary canal may be partially inactivated by the liver, it was anticipated that for comparable therapeutic response the oral dose would probably be much larger than the requirements by intramuscular injection. This assumption, together with the extreme scarcity of the compound,