Response of Anterior Pituitary of Immature Castrated Rat to Testosterone and Related Compounds. ∗

Abstract

It has been reported that injections of extracts containing the male sex hormone prevented the post-castration increase in the size and number of the basophilic cells in the anterior hypophysis of the rat. 1 , 2 In later studies, Nelson and Gallagher 3 studied the action of synthetic male factors, androsterone and related compounds, in castrated female rats. Such injections prevented castration changes in the pituitary; they also state that these injections induced the same type of degranulation as had been obtained by the injection of oestrin. Below are presented studies on the action of testosterone and its related compounds, testosterone-acetate and testosterone-propionate on the anterior pituitary of castrated immature rats.

Twenty immature rats, mostly males, castrated immediately before injections were begun, received daily injections of 500 gamma of either testosterone,† testosterone-propionate, or testosterone-acetate for 10 days; the animals were sacrificed 24 hours following the final injection twenty three littermates castrated and killed at the same time as the injected rats were used as controls. The prostate and seminal vesicles were weighed together. Their mean combined weight in the injected rats was 663 mg., the range from 279 to 1,010 mg. The mean combined weight of these organs in the control rats was 40 mg. The mean pituitary weight of the castrated control rats was slightly greater than that of the injected rats (Table I).

The pituitaries of all rats were studied histologically; cell counts were made on all sections studied. In the castrated control rats there was a marked increase in the size and the number of the basophilic cells (Table I). A majority of these cells were well packed with granules; the negative image of the Golgi apparatus was quite prominent, usually being more or less circular in form and situated between the nucleus and the cell membrane. A lesser number of these large basophiles appeared degranulated; in some of these cells small yellow-orange bodies, thought to be mitochondria, were observed in the blue cytoplasm.