THE EXTRACTION OF CORTIN-LIKE SUBSTANCES FROM HUMAN POST-OPERATIVE URINE1

Abstract

The urine of patients exposed to surgical procedures contained a substance or substances which were able: to protect adrenalectomized rats against the lethal action of cold; to sustain life and growth of the adrenalectomized immature rat; and to induce deposition of glycogen in the liver of the fasted adrenalectomized rat. A method of purification was devised which permitted on the avg. a 100 fold conc. of the biologically active substances with a loss of approx. 25% of the activity present in the crude urinary extracts. The active substances was shown to be ketones. Highly purified ketonic fractions contained 25-100 cold units/mg., (1 cold unit represents the activity of 10 [gamma] of corticosterone in the Selye-Schenker cold exposure test). Urine excreted post-operatively contained 3-30 times the amt. of cortin-like substances that it excreted by normal [male][male]. This finding supports the hypothesis that the urinary cortin-like substances are metabolites of the adrenocortical hormones. The metabolic fate of adrenal cortical extracts administered intraven. into 3 men was studied. From 7 to 17.2% of the biological activity, as measured by the cold exposure test, of the administered extract was recovered from the urine.