Presence of Estrogenic Hormone(s) in Testicular Material

Abstract

Although a number of studies have been made on male urine to determine the presence or absence of estrogens, comparatively few have been made upon testes. This is rather surprising in the light of the work of Zondek 1 who reported enormous quantities of estrogenic substance (more recently identified as alpha-estradiol and estrone by Beall 2 ) in the testes of the stallion.

Zondek 1 while more often credited with the report on the stallion testes, examined also the bull testes. Perhaps because of the relatively minute amounts (less than 0.1 %) found in the latter as compared to the former it was not thought to be worth recording in the later literature. Zondek assumed that “the mass production and excretion of the estrogenic hormones in the testes is a peculiarity of the equines.”

There is considerable difference of opinion among those who have examined testes for estrogens. A number of workers have failed to secure any results from their extracts, but on the other hand sufficient data have been recorded to indicate that estrogens occur in the testes of several species. Fellner, 3 Brouha and Simonnet, 4 Dorfman, et al., 5 all reported the presence of estrogens in bull testes, while Laqueur and deJongh 6 report them in human testes and Dodds, et al., 7 in “mammalian” testes. With the exception of Zondek all of the workers who have found estrogens in the testes have reported only qualitative results.

The desirability of further quantitative study is evident, but any quantitative study based upon extraction and the assay is bound to be more or less inaccurate. About the most one can say is that there is at least as much hormone as the assay indicates.