Transplants of Adrenal Cortex Into Rat Ovaries.

Abstract

We have reported 1 that transplantation of adrenal cortex into the ovary at the same time that bilateral adrenalectomy was performed proved successful in maintaining the life in 5 out of 12 piebald rats, and suggested 2 that if the operation were carried out in 2 stages some weeks apart—(a) removal of one adrenal and transplantation of a portion of it into an ovary, (b) removal of the second adrenal some time following the first operation—we believed the operation would be successful in a greater number of cases. In this paper we report that in 6 attempts at transplantations with this method all were successful.

All the rats used in the above experiments were virgin animals, 3 to 5 months old at the time of the initial operations, and all transplants were made during dioestrous. The transplant was successful in each case. All 6 rats were in excellent health and showed no insufficiency symptoms at the time of removal of the ovary containing the adrenal transplant 50 to a little over 60 days following removal of the second adrenal, i. e., a much longer interval than the longest survival period of our successfully adrenalectomized rats; 2 all except one, in which accessory adrenal tissue was found, showed typical insufficiency symptoms and died 3 to 13 days after removal of the transplant. It is to be noted that the operation did not interfere with normal pregnancy, and that pregnancy did not prevent insufficiency symptoms and death when the transplant was removed.