“Acid” Phosphatase and Functional Activity of the Prostate (Man) and Preputial Glands (Rat)

Abstract

While investigating the source of marked outpourings of “acid” phosphatase in the urine of adult men, Kutscher and Wolbergs 1 discovered that normal adult prostate tissue is extremely rich in a phosphatase, apparently specific, 2 with optimal activity at approximately pH 5.0. At about the same time, Moore and Hanzel 3 noted that prostate tissue extracts split off inorganic phosphorus from sodium nucleinate, a “nuclease” effect attributable to nucleotidases, which are now classified as phosphatases. 4 , 5 Prostate phosphatase has since been found also 6 , 7 in the primary tumor, at the site of distant metastases and in the blood serum of patients with metastasizing carcinoma of the prostate gland. The implications of these observations have been considered elsewhere. 6 , 7

The prostate gland of children, we find, contains little “acid” phosphatase (4.5 units at birth, 1.5 units at 4 years, 73.0 units at 13 years. per g fresh tissue). But adult prostate glands, though varying widely in phosphatase activity at pH 4.9 (from 2,284 to 522 units per g fresh tissue, in our series) consistently exceed by far the “acid” phosphatase activity of liver, kidney, duodenal mucosa and bone (Table 1)—organs generally regarded as so rich in phosphatase as to imply some significant rôle of the enzyme in their respective functions. The presence in adult prostate tissue and in the semen of such high concentrations of this active enzyme (with optimal pH approximating that obtaining in the adult vagina) would suggest, similarly, that prostate phosphatase exercises some significant function in reproduction.