Abstract
We have found 1 that injections of extracts of pregnancy urine markedly increased the weight of the ovaries and the pituitaries of female rats. The ovaries contained many large corpora lutea and both partially luteinized and unluteinized follicles. The vaginae were usually mucified at autopsy. The anterior pituitaries exhibited marked loss of granules from practically all basophiles and a decrease in their relative percentage. Many eosinophiles were swollen and showed loss of granules; they were reduced in percentage. The degree of change in the eosinophiles was proportional to the increase in weight of ovaries and pituitaries. Oestrin stimulates the production of a luteinizing hormone by the anterior hypophysis 2 , 3 and injection of oestrin into mature female rats results in the formation of large corpora lutea comparable to those of pregnancy. 4 , 5 This paper is concerned with the anterior pituitaries of 30 mature female rats which received daily injections of 200 rat units of oestrin† for 12 days and in whose ovaries intense luteinization had been induced. Serial sections of the pituitaries were cut and cell counts made on representative sections. Previous studies on the anterior pituitaries of 143 normal female rats served as controls for these studies. The data on both groups are arranged in a frequency distribution table and analyzed statistically (Table I).
The pituitaries of the injected rats were greatly increased in weight (previously reported by Hohlweg 4 ); the mean was 20.1 mg., the range from 12 to 27 mg. The mean pituitary weight of 143 normal cyclic females was 10.5 mg. (Table I). Marked morphologic changes were found in the anterior pituitaries; most outstanding of these was the complete loss of granules from all the basophiles. The non-granular basophiles remaining in the gland were considerably enlarged.
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