Output of oestrogens, testosterone and their precursors by isolated human adrenal cells as compared with that of glucocorticosteroids.

The output of oestrogens, testosterone and their precursors was compared with that of glucocorticosteroids under standardized conditions, in a suspension of isolated human adrenal cells. Cortisol, corticosterone, androstenedione, dehydroepiandrosterone and its sulphate all increased in the same proportions after ACTH stimulation. The response to the logarithm of ACTH concentrations had a sigmoid shape but was fairly linear between 5 and 100 to 1000 muu./ml. The output of dehydroepiandrosterone plus that of its sulphate was of the same order of magnitude as the production of cortisol; the output of free dehydroepiandrosterone averaged half that of the sulphate indicating that the adrenal cortex is capable, under certain conditions, of producing large amounts of the free steroid. The output of androstenedione was very low, on average 35 times lower than that of cortisol, suggesting by extrapolation that the adrenal secretion may not be the main source of androstenedione in vivo or that ACTH is not the unique stimulus to adrenal androstenedione secretion. The output of testosterone was small to negligible and that of oestrogens was practically absent. In three additional experiments the influence of prolactin, prostaglandins, FSH and HCG was explored: no selective stimulation of androgen or oestrogen output was observed except in one experiment in which HCG stimulated adrenal testosterone production.