ADRENAL Venning et al. (1, 2) developed a method for the assay of urinary corticosteroid'like substances based upon the glycogen deposition in the livers of glucose treated adrenalectomized mice. A glycogenic unit is defined as the equivalent of the biological activity of 1 p.g. of 17-hydroxy-ll-dehydrocorticosterone. It was pointed out by these workers that the administration of glucose increased the sensitivity of the test many times. Similar assay methods have also been described by Dorfman et al. (3) and Eggleston et al. (4) using adrenalectomized mice without glucose treatment. Dorfman et al. (5) reexamined the cold test of Selye & Schenker (6) for the bioassay of urinary corticoids and found that the method was not practical for extended routine use.Two chemical methods for the determination of the urinary corticosteroid-like substances have also appeared. Heard & Sobel (7) introduced a color metric method, based on the reducing sugar like property of the adrenal cortical hormones, for the quantitative estimation of these steroids; the color was produced by the reduc tion of phosphomolybdic acid to molybdenum blue in glacial acetic acid. The reaction is given by steroids containing a primary or secondary (but not tertiary) , a-ketol grouping, an a, ,B-unsatu rated 3-ketone group, or both. Thus, desoxycorticosterone exhibits the strongest reducing properties. The method has applied to the estimation of urinary neutral lipide soluble reducing substances as an index of adrenal cortical function (8) and reveals a good agree ment between results obtained by this chemical method and that by the bioassay technique of Venning et al. (1). The method of Lowenstein et al. (9) in determining cortico steroids in urines is based on period ate oxidation of the primary alcohol group at C21 which yields one mole of formaldehyde per 1 This review includes the following subjects: adrenals, gonads, insulin, and anterior pituitary. Due to the limitation of space, other topics have been omitted. 291 Annu. Rev. Biochem. 1947.16:291-322. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org Access provided by University of Sussex on 02/07/15. For personal use only. Quick links to online content Further ANNUAL REVIEWS
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