Study on the corticoid-like action of glycyrrhizine and the mechanism of its action.

Molhuysen et al.(1950) demonstrated through their experiments that licorice extract causes retension of sodium and chloride as well as excretion of potassium, i. e. DOC-like action, in normal subjects. Groen et al.(1951), Card et al.(1953) and Calvert(1954) reported its therapeutic effects in Addison's disease or adrenocortical insufficiency.Thereafter glycyrrhizine has been shown to be the active principle of DOC-like action of licorice, but the mechanism of its action is obscure, although suggesting many hypotheses(Groen et al., 1952; Hudson et al., 1954 Louis et al., 1956; Elmadjian et al. 1956). We studied the action of glycyrrhizine upon the metabolism of corticoids in vivo as well as in vitro, and proved that glycyrrhizine inhibits the metabolism of corticoids.