Abstract
Summary
1. The effect of 2 different dosage schedules of cortisone acetate on guinea pigs infected with Rocky Mountain spotted fever of varying degrees of severity has been investigated. The overall mortality rate in 25 animals given daily intramuscular injections of 1 mg of the drug, starting on the day each received, by intraperitoneal injection, an inoculum of rickettsiae, did not differ significantly from the mortality rate in infected guinea pigs which received no treatment. The severity of the infection induced by different preparations of rickettsiae varied considerably; when this factor was taken into consideration, it appeared that cortisone acetate in doses comparable to those employed in human beings reduced the mortality rate in those animals with moderately severe infections. 2. In another group of 20 animals which received daily intramuscular injections of 25 mg of cortisone acetate for 5 days at the peak of the illness (fourth through the eighth day of infection) the overall mortality rate was identical with that in 20 infected animals not given the hormone. During the period of administration of this relatively huge dose of cortisone acetate, however, the fatality rate was significantly lower than that in the untreated animals.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.