Excretion of Gonadotropic and Estrogenic Hormones in Urine During Normal Menstrual Cycle

Abstract

None of the methods of bioassay for the urinary gonadotropins or estrogens is better than roughly quantitative. As long as definite standards of technic are not available the various absolute values claimed in the literature cannot be compared and no definite statements as to right or wrong can be issued. However, normal and abnormal fluctuations of these hormones during the menstrual cycle should be recognized with some degree of uniformity regardless of the absolute values obtained by the various methods. Our former belief in a single excretion peak of urinary gonadotropins during the menstrual cycle seems disproven by D'Amour, Funk and Liverman, 1 who showed as many as 3 excretion peaks in daily assays of urinary gonadotropins from normal women. Our previous conception of the premenstrual height of estrin excretion has been refuted by the careful investigation of Gustavson and co-workers, 2 who showed that as early as 5 days after the onset of menstruation a peak in estrin excretion curve can be found. This demonstrated that more data on the normal menstrual cycle of women are needed in order to establish the correlationship between the excretion of gonadotropic and estrogenic hormones. We have examined the urine of 3 healthy women during a complete menstrual cycle for gonadotropic and estrogenic substances and wish to report briefly on the results:

Method. Twenty-four-hour specimens of urine were collected from 3 women between the ages of 20 to 30 who by careful history did not show any evidence of menstrual disorders. In all 3 women menarche set in between 11 and 13 years, and menstruation occurred every 28 days, lasting from 4 to 6 days. There was no excessive flow, no menstrual pain or premenstrual tension.