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Washington, D.C. — Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center announced today that a new drug they have been studying appears to be helpful in controlling levels of excess cortisol, mainly induced by stress, found in many sufferers of HIV, Alzheimer's Disease, depression and other diseases.
Although cortisol is a hormone that occurs naturally in the human body and is needed to help the body adapt to stress, too much cortisol can cause memory loss, kill brain cells, depress the immune system and decrease reproductive function.
Georgetown researcher Vassilios Papadopoulos, Ph.D., and a team from the division of Hormone Research, found in the laboratory tests conducted over the past three months that they could control cortisol levels with the drug Anticort. Anticort was developed by the Las Vegas, Nev.-based biotechnology firm Steroidogenesis Inhibitors International Inc. (STGI), which funded the laboratory research conducted at Georgetown.
"Although more work is needed to understand how Anticort works, these results clearly indicate that we now have a powerful tool to control the stress response and its detrimental effects on the body," Papadopoulos said. Clinical trials have begun at the AIDS Research Alliance in Los Angeles to examine how Anticort works to reduce cortisol levels, and to examine its effects in adult HIV patients.
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