Growth Drug

Lederle Laboratories developed aureomycin, an antibiotic, to treat such human ills as whooping cough, typhus and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. This week Drs. E.L.R. Stokstad and T.H. Jukes of Lederle told a Philadelphia convention of the American Chemical Society that aureomycin has an unexpected non-medical talent: it makes domestic animals grow faster.

The Lederle scientists were working on vitamin B-12 (another growth promoter), one of whose sources is the fermentation product from which aureomycin is separated. To their astonishment, they found that this material had more effect on the growth of chicks than pure vitamin B-12 itself. When they investigated, they found that the small trace of aureomycin in the mixture was responsible. It worked with turkeys. It also worked with hogs, speeding their growth into marketable chops and bacon by as much as 50%.

Drs. Stokstad and Jukes do not know why the antibiotic is also a growth stimulant. They do not think it functions as a vitamin. More likely, they suspect, it inhibits intestinal bacteria that consume vitamins or have other harmful effects on the animal's nutrition. They hope that it may prove valuable in treating some types of human malnutrition.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.