SENSITIVITY OF THE RAT DIAPHRAGM TO GROWTH HORMONE.

Abstract

The effect of growth hormone (GH) in vitro on the rate of intracellular accumulation of the non-utilizable amino acid α-aminoisobutyric acid (AIB) was studied in the intact rat diaphragm preparation. Bovine or ovine GH (25 μg/ml incubation medium) markedly stimulated the accumulation of AIB-¹⁴C by diaphragms from hypophysectomized rats, while there was no or only a very slight effect on diaphragms from normal rats. In diaphragms from rats with the pituitary gland autotransplanted to the kidney capsule GH in vitro stimulated the accumulation of AIB-¹⁴C significantly more than in diaphragms from normal rats but significantly less than in diaphragms from hypophysectomized rats. Injections of GH intramuscularly for 4 days to hypophysectomized rats made the diaphragms from these rats less sensitive or completely insensitive to GH in vitro. These results indicate strongly that the relative insensitivity to GH in vitro of diaphragms from normal rats is due to the fact that the muscle tissues from these rats has been exposed to the endogenously secreted GH. The results show that GH can influence the accumulation of AIB-¹⁴C in the isolated rat diaphragm in two different ways giving an acute or »stimulatory« effect and a late or »inhibitory« effect, and that it seems to be a time-relationship between these two effects of the hormone.