FRACTIONATION BY COUNTERCURRENT DISTRIBUTION OF URINARY ESTROGENS IN NORMAL INDIVIDUALS AND IN PATIENTS WITH HYPERADRENOCORTICISM*

Abstract

IN ESTABLISHING the pattern of urinary estrogens which probably originate from the adrenals, it seemed particularly important to determine whether it differed in untreated cases of adrenal hyperplasia and tumor from that in normal women and men. Studies were made on 2 normal women, 1 pregnant woman, 2 normal men, 2 patients with virilizing adrenal tumor and 4 patients (2 males, 2 females) with congenital adrenal hyperplasia before and during cortisone therapy. The present methods of determining urinary estrogens are unsatisfactory because estrone, estradiol-17β and estriol¹ have widely different biologic, fluorometric and colorimetric potencies. To study the excretion of urinary estrogens satisfactorily it is necessary to employ fractionation methods. In the present work the counter current distribution technic of Craig and co-workers (1), as adapted to estrogen fractionation by Lewis L. Engel and colleagues (2), was employed. To obtain good separations, however, it was found necessary to make several redistributions, employing different systems of solvents to be described.