Effect of androsterone and of male hormone concentrates on the accessory reproductive organs of castrated rats, mice and guinea-pigs.

THE accessory reproductive glands of castrated rodents have long been recognised as suitable objects for testing the activity of male hormone preparations. A full bibliography will be found in Koch [1932] and the other literature cited below. Moore and Gallagher [1930, 2], enumerating mammalian indicators for male hormone, state that, after the spermatozoon motility test (one not in general use), the restoration of normal prostatic structure is the most sensitive test, the next being cytological restoration of the seminal vesicles. Many tests of this kind have been made, but although histological changes in the glandular epithelium have been brought about by a few days' treatment, yet the stimulation or mnaintenance of glands of normal adult size in groups of animals castrated for as long as 10 or 14 days has not been quantitatively demonstrated, until recently by Dingemanse et al. [1935]. These workers give the average seminal vesicle weights in 5 immature castrated rats injected for 24 days with a testis extract as 538 mg., approximately equivalent to the glands in a normal 175 g. rat (Fig. 3) and about two-thirds of the full size. Now that androsterone, the male hormone first extracted from urine, can be obtained artificially in larger quantities, by the method of Ruzicka et al. [1934,2; Ruzicka, 1935], it has been possible to make an extended quantitative investigation of the responses in weight of the prostate and seminal vesicles. For comparative purposes, a number of experiments have also been made with several urine concentrates. The two types of experiment which have been carried out are: (1) maintenance of normal size glands in rats and mice castrated as adults, and (2) production of growth in the glands of prepubertally castrated rats, mice and guinea-pigs. An experiment of the first typewas reported byMoore and collaborators [1930], who state that they maintained in normal condition the accessory glands of two adult castrated rats for 20 days by injections of crude male hormone begun on the day following castration; unfortunately no figures are given for either the weight of the rats or the weight of the glands. Hansen [1933] also carried out maintenance experiments on rats for 10-day periods but the accessory glands were not weighed, only examined histologically. Martins [1930] carried out similar partial maintenance experiments on mice of about 18 g. weight, using a length-breadth index of seminal vesicle size. Many experiments of the second type have been reported on rats [Moore and collaborators, 1930; Freud et al., 1930; 1932; Korenchevsky and collaborators, 1932-1935] and others have been carried out on mice [Voss and Loewe, 1931].