Abstract
We have been unable to detect any comb growth-promoting substance in the urine of untreated normal adult male rabbits or in the feces of male rabbits even when they were given 10 mg of testosterone or testosterone propionate daily for 4 or 5 days. On the other hand, the above mentioned doses of these androgens regularly lead to the excretion of considerable amounts of androgen in the urine. This result is confirmatory of the observations of McCullagh, et al., 1 Hoskins, et al., 2 Dorfman and Hamilton, 3 and many others, and is at variance with the observations of Kochakian. 4
In these experiments 5 mg of testosterone or testosterone propionate∗ in 1 cc of sesame oil were injected into the abdominal wall twice daily for 4 or 5 days with or without the daily oral administration of 100 mg of desiccated thyroid for similar periods. Desiccated thyroid administration was begun 1 day before the first dose of androgen. The urine was collected under benzene and extracted according to the method of Dingemanse and Laqueur. 5 The extracts were assayed by Fussgänger's 6 modification of the capon comb test. The essential data of the experiments are given in Table I.
It will be seen that 2 intact rabbits receiving 40 mg of testosterone propionate excreted slightly more urinary androgen than the same rabbits after thyroidectomy and the intraäbdominal suspension of their testes, although 50 mg were given. When 50 mg of testosterone propionate were injected and 500 mg of desiccated thyroid given there was nearly twice as much androgen excreted in 3 of the 4 rabbits. The rabbit (1599) with only a slight increase in androgen excretion following desiccated thyroid administration had been gonadectomized.
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