Significance of Female Sex Hormone Reaction in the Male Blood.

Abstract

In 1925, simultaneously and independently, Loewe of Dorpat 1 and one of us with collaborators 2 demonstrated the presence of the female hormone in the circulating blood of females by means of the rodent vaginal spread test. 3 Since then, in numerous publications we have attempted to simplify and standardize the method of extracting and testing human blood for the female sex hormone. 4 Among other applications we advocated the use of this test to determine the sex of pseudo-hermaphroditic individuals in whom we regarded a positive reaction, appearing cyclically, as a proof of the presence of functioning ovaries and feminine sex. 5 Our preliminary work had shown that large quantities of bull's blood (150-100 cc.) gave a negative reaction when extracted by our method. The same applied to concentrated lipoid, HCl, saline and watery extracts of bull's testes, as well as extracts of the hypophysis, thyroid and adrenal, liver, muscle, various proteins, etc. 6 The work of Dohrn, 7 who claimed to have obtained a positive reaction with male urine first called our attention to the possible non-specificity of the Allen and Doisy reaction. After our investigation on male bloods had been completed, the short article of Hirsch, 8 who used our method, appeared. In the 4 male bloods which he examined, he has found a positive reaction.

To date we have obtained 70 bloods from 55 males. Of these, 10 had to be discarded because the injected mice died early. The technic was that mentioned iii our last article, 4 in which 40 cc. of blood were dried with sodium sulphate, extracted with ether, the dry ethereal cxtract taken up in 2 cc. of water and injected. Our readings are : 0 to −2 =no reaction; 2 to 2+ =weak reaction; −3 to 3 =threshold reaction; 3 to 4 = strong reaction.