THE 17-KETOSTEROIDS: THEIR ORIGIN, DETERMINATION AND SIGNIFICANCE

Abstract

The authors consider only those urinary steroids with a ketone group at carbon-17 of the steroid nucleus, and such steroids as may be related to them as precursors or metabolites. They review nomenclature; nature; glandular source; chemical precursors; effect of exogenous hormones; metabolism in vivo and in vitro; methods for detn.; methods of fractionation; output of normal human individuals in 3 age groups; effects upon output of changes in the pituitary, thyroid, islets of Langerhans, testes, ovaries, and adrenal cortex (Addison''s disease, cortical tumors, cortical hyperplasia); output in pregnancy, in male pseudohermaphroditism, in true her-maphroditism, in "constitutional" sexual precocity, in sexual precocity secondary to cerebral lesions, and in Turner''s syndrome; output under stress of surgical operations, of daily life, of exercise, of fatigue, of starvation, of anorexia nervosa, and in psychosis; output in the presence of such malignant lesions as prostatic, mammary, and gastric cancer, and leukemia; output in mental deficiencies, electroshock therapy, prefrontal lobotomy, myotonia dystrophica, hypertension, mastitis, gynecomastia of malnutrition, hepatic disease, ankylosing spon-dylarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, gouty arthritis, renal insufficiency, benign hypertrophy of the prostate gland, and migraine headache. The excretion of 17-ketosteroids in the bull, steer, cow, pig, boar, ewe, dog, rhesus monkey, mouse, and rabbit is considered briefly. 281 references.