GONADOTROPIC HORMONE: COMPARISON OF ULTRAFILTRATION AND ALCOHOL-PRECIPITATION METHODS OF RECOVERY FROM URINE1

Abstract

TREATMENT of the hypogonadal patient, either male or female, cannot reasonably be instituted until a definitive diagnosis is established. The definitive diagnosis must state whether gonadal failure primarily involves the gonad or is secondary to failure of pituitary gonadotropin secretion. The only sure way to make this differentiation is to determine the amount of gonadotropic hormone in blood or urine. If gonadal failure is secondary to pituitary failure, urinary gonadotropins will be distinctly lower than normal and stimulation by administration of gonadotropins is indicated. If gonadal failure is primary in the gonad, urinary gonadotropins will be distinctly higher than normal and administration of gonadotropins will fail to stimulate the gonad. Therefore substitutional therapy with sex hormones is permissible. As yet methods for recovering and assaying urinary gonadotropins have been too complex, time-consuming and expensive for clinic and hospital laboratories, and as a consequence have been limited largely to research laboratories. Recently Gorbman (1) introduced a new principle for recovering urinary hypophyseal hormones by use of the ultrafilter, which appeared to offer the possibility of overcoming these difficulties. Therefore we compared ultrafiltration with the alcohol-precipitation-dialysis method of Heller and Chandler (4).