THE EXCRETION OF DEHYDROISOANDROSTERONE DURING ADRENAL STIMULATION WITH ADRENOCORTICOTROPIC HORMONE*

Abstract

DEHYDROISOANDROSTERONE is recognized as a steroid excretion product related to adrenal function, and it is excreted in large amounts by persons suffering from adrenal tumor (1, 2, 3) but not by those suffering from adrenal hyperplasia. These facts suggest that a study of this excretion product after stimulation of the adrenal cortex with adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) would yield further information on the activity of the normal adrenal cortex. The recent contribution of Landau and associates (4), using the Pettenkofer reaction, again calls attention to dehydroisoandrosterone as an important excretion product connected with normal adrenal cortical activity. The well recognized instability of dehydroisoandrosterone to the hydrolysis with strong acid at high temperature used by previous investigators, led to the use of milder hydrolytic procedures. As pointed out by Leiberman and Dobriner (5) mild acid hydrolysis appears to be sufficient to liberate the steroids conjugated as sulfate and certainly dehydroisoandrosterone sulfate. Their procedure of ether extraction at pH 1 for forty-eight hours at room temperature liberates between 75 and 90 per cent of the material (reacting to Allen's procedure for dehydroisoandrosterone) found in the crude butanol extracts of unhydrolyzed urine. The separation of the product extracted by ether at pH 1 into ketonic and nonketonic fractions, showed that 80 to 90 per cent was recovered in the ketonic fraction, with a barely measurable amount left in the nonketonic fraction. Equally good recovery of this material was found in the digitonin-precipitable fraction. The nature of the unhydrolyzed material which can be liberated by higher temperature and acid has not been carefully investigated but it contains only traces of steroid reacting to Allen's test.