Action of Predigested Corpus Luteum Extract on Excised Vas Deferens.

Abstract

Macht and Matsumoto 1 called attention to the peculiar sensitiveness of smooth muscle from the excised surviving vas deferens to extracts of corpus luteum. Such extracts produce a marked contraction of the vas deferens which is exceeded only by contractions produced by epinephrin. Extracts of numerous other glands, applied to the excised surviving vas deferens in the same doses, produced only slight contractions of its smooth muscle. This peculiar selective effect of corpus luteum extract on the vas deferens is not exhibited by the follicular hormone of the ovary but is specific for the hormone of the corpus luteum. For this reason, the authors suggested its employment in the evaluation of corpus luteum products, especially as clinical experience seemed to point to a parallelism between the therapeutic potency of corpus luteum products and their degree of activity as expressed by the degree of contraction of the vas deferens. 2

More recently Macht, Stickels and Seckinger have found that the vas deferens reaction gave results which were parallel to the inhibitory effects of corpus luteum extracts on the oestrus cycle of the guinea pig as judged by a microscopic study of vaginal smears. 3

Inasmuch as some hormones, as epinephrin, exert their characteristic effects only on injection, while others, like thyroid glands, for instance, produce their specific therapeutic effects on oral administration as well as after injection, it was considered worth while to investigate whether the effect of digestive juices will destroy the activity of the ovarian hormones or not. This was deemed especially desirable in view of a recent statement made by Novak on purely a priori speculative grounds, unsupported Hy any experimental data, that “there is much reason to believe that the active principle of the ovary is destroyed by the alimentary juice.” 4