Combined Therapy in Histoplasmosis and Coccidioidomycosis

THERE IS no reported instance of treatment of systemic fungous disease in man with testosterone compounds. In 1953 Lamb and his associates1reported the cure of a mycetoma caused by an atypical Nocardia under treatment with large doses of pregnenolone acetate. Trial of this steroid in disseminated coccidioidomycosis has been unsuccessful.*The use of aromatic diamidines structurally related to synthetic estrogens is being thoroughly investigated by Curtis and his co-workers.2 The present paper presents in vitro and in vivo laboratory studies of testosterone compounds as fungistatic agents and a report of the clinical trial of methyltestosterone and meth-dia-mer-sulfonamides (triple sulfonamides) in three cases of the deep mycoses. LABORATORY ASSAY OF ANTIMYCOTIC EFFECT OF TESTOSTERONE COMPOUNDS AND SULFONAMIDES In Vitro Assay of Testosterone, Methyltestosterone, and Testosterone Propionate.—In 1949 Reiss3demonstrated that testosterone, methyltestosterone, and other steroids and steroid-like compounds possess moderate fungistatic activity in vitro against Histoplasma capsulatum and other pathogenic fungi. Using a pour