Abstract
Injection of oestrin 1 or of P.U. extract 2 into adult rats has been shown to decrease the gonad-stimulating potency of their pituitaries. Marked pituitary changes, consisting primarily of degranulation and retrogressive changes in the basophiles, occur in the pituitaries of P.U. injected rats. 3 These structural findings are of such character as might be expected in cases of decreased potency.
The present paper is concerned with anterior pituitary changes in the adult female rat following prolonged injection of follicle stimulating hormone (hereafter spoken of as C.U.) from the urine of castrate or menopause women. Smith and Engle in recent and yet unpublished experiments have shown a marked decrease in the gonad-stimulating potency of the pituitary of the adult female rat when injected with C.U. Ovarian weights of immature littermate female mice which received pituitary implants from normal or injected animals were taken as the measure of potency. The potency of pituitaries from injected rats was strikingly reduced, in many instances averaging about one-half that of the normal. Equivalents of 40 cc. of urine were injected daily for from 27 to 42 days.
Cellular changes in the anterior pituitary following C.U. injections are striking. Of the 3 cell types, the basophiles are most affected. A marked degranulation occurs in many cells. With the cytological technique which we employ, the blue granules are depleted, but are frequently replaced in part by irregular cytoplasmic masses which stain yellow. This phenomenon is the same, though more accentuated, as that previously described 3 in pituitaries from P.U. injected animals. The degranulated cells, at times, have a cytoplasm free of visible structure, except for the Golgi sphere which retains its blue ground color dotted by minute acidophilic granules.
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