Adrenal and clinical responses to corticotrophin and prednisone in inflammatory disease of the colon.

Clinical experience suggests that some patients with severe ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease of the colon who are not responding to oral prednisone improve on treatment with corticotrophin. Why this is so is not known and the optimum dosage of corticotrophin has not been established. To investi- gate these two problems observations have been made on the effect of prednisone and/or corti- cotrophin on the adrenal function and clinical response in 20 patients with colonic inflammatory disease.