Morphologic reaction of the anterior pituitaries of mature female rats to prolonged injections of pregnancy urine extracts

✍ Scribed by Wolfe, J. M.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1935
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 516 KB
• Volume: 63
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-276X
• DOI: 10.1002/ar.1090630103

✦ Synopsis

It has been reported by Severinghaus ('34), and Wolfe, Ellison and Rosenfeld ('34) that injections of pregnancy urine extracts in mature female rats induced marked morphologic changes in the anterior pituitary. The latter workers found that daily injections of 25 to 75 units of such extracts for a period of 15 days resulted in a marked but extremely variable weight increase in the ovaries and the pituitaries. The ovary weights ranged from 108 to 736 mg; the pituitaries from 9.5 to 26 mg. Almost invariably, the pituitary weight was increased proportionally to the increase in weight of the ovaries.

I n the ovaries there were many large corpora lutea and a smaller number of follicles, many of which mere partially luteinieed. The vaginae of the majority of these animals were mncified. The anterior pituitaries presented striking changes when compared with normals. The basophiles exhibited marked granular depletion and their relative percentage was reduced t o a low level, Definite changes were also found in many of the eosinophiles ; i.e., swelling of the cells, loss of granules, and decrease in relative percentage. These morphologic changes were relatively slight in rats in which the weights of the ovaries and pituitaries were not greatly increased, but became progressively more marked in the rats These studies were dded by a grant from the Division of Medical Rdenees of the Rockefeller Foundation.