A Quantitative Study of the Urinary Excretion of Hypophyseal Gonadotropin, Estrogen, and Androgen of Normal Women.

Work upon the assay of hormones in blood and urine has been progressive in volume and quality since Loewe (1) and Frank (2) demonstrated the presence of estrogenic hormone in blood. Loewe (3) then revealed that this substance is excreted cyclically in the urine. Such assays were made practicable by the work of Kahnt and Doisy (4) who standardized the procedure of assay for this hormone, using the changes induced in the vaginal smear of castrated adult rats. The presence of gonadotropic substance in blood and urine was established shortly thereafter. The existence of such a gonadotropin and its production in the anterior hypophysis were made clear by the fundamental work of P. E. Smith (5) and Zondek and Aschheim (6). They also provided a method for determining its presence by finding that premature maturity is induced in the immature rat and mouse by this hormone (6, 7). Aschheim and Zondek (8, 9), using this test object, were able to show that a gonadotropin may be detected in the urine of pregnancy, although this gonadotropin is now known to be chorionic in origin. Fluhmann (10), Zondek (11), and others soon pointed out that the hypophyseal gonadotropin is similarly excreted after ovariectomy and the menopause. The same gonadotropin next was found to appear during the middle of the normal menstrual cycle (12). The demonstration of the excretion of androgenic substances soon followed (13, 14), and methods of assay were provided by the capon comb method (15) and the colorimetric reaction of Zimmermann (16). Finally, excretion products of progesterone were shown to appear in the urine (17, 18). Despite the volume of work which has been published since these initial studies, further quantitative information is highly desirable. Recent