THE RESPONSE OF THE THYROID GLAND OF THE RAT TO SEVERE STRESS

Abstract

STRESSING agents produce a decrease in the activity of the thyroidgland. Williams et al. (1949) found that the I¹³¹ uptake in the thyroid was decreased by the administration of adrenaline or typhoid vaccine or by trauma. A similar result was obtained with other stressing agents: formalin injections (Paschkis et al. 1950), anoxia, starvation, and vitamin deficiencies (Van Middlesworth and Berry, 1950), and adrenaline injections (Softer et al., 1950). Recently, Money et al. (1950), studying the effects of adrenal cortical products on the uptake of radioiodine in the thyroid of the rat, found that ACTH and cortisone greatly decreased the uptake. These results were confirmed by Reiss (1950) at least in normal human subjects. This is an attempt to study further the effect of stressing agents on the thyroid gland of the rat using both a chemical method for the determination of the uptake of radioiodine and a radioautographic method for the vizualization of the sites of the uptake.