REGULATION OF ENDOGENOUS CORTIN PRODUCTION

Abstract

INVESTIGATION in the output of cortin should furnish important information about adrenal cortex activity in normal and pathological states. Ever since the existence of adrenal cortex hormones was known, responsibility for numerous regulatory processes was attributed to the adrenal cortex, although changes in the content of adrenal cortex compounds in body fluids could not be easily demonstrated. Several reliable biological methods for determining cortin in body fluids, particularly urine, were worked out, but all required large numbers of experimental animals. The margin of error of these methods is considerable, and their results prove too circumstantial for investigations in series. A method for direct chemical determination of cortical compounds is therefore especially valuable. By making use of the reducing properties of side chains of all these substances, chemical determination of them in purified extracts of the body fluids is possible. Talbot, Saltzman, Wixom, and Wolfe (1945), and Heard, Sobel, and Venning (946),