Abstract
Tanaka et al. (1) have discovered the potent adrenocorticotropic activity of (Gly1)-ACTH (1-18)-octadecapeptide amide (50022), one of the synthetic polypeptide synthesized by Otsuka et al. (2), as well as its lypolytic and MSH activities.
Since ACTH has several extra-adrenal effects such as induction of stretching and yawning syndrome (3), sexual excitement (4), inhibition of the extinction of conditioned avoidance behaviour (5-7), hypoglycemic effect (8), in addition to its lypolytic and MSH activities, extensive pharmacological studies have been carried out on 50022 (9). The only noteworthy pharmacological effect observed with 50022 was a depressor effect seen in cats and rabbits on intravenous injection.
This experiment was undertaken to investigate the depressor mechanism of 50022 in experimental animals and to further compare the vascular effect of 50022 with that of vasoactive polypeptides.
