Immunoreactive erythropoietin in rodent submaxillary gland. Autonomic control of exocrine secretion and factors influencing its concentration.

The SMG of mice and rats contain a heterologous group of biologically active factors. Some are well known, can be obtained at high purity and are well-characterized. There is strong evidence for the presence of others although they have not been purified. Finally, some of them are questionable and/or have not yet been characterized. EPO would be one of the factors whose presence in the SMG is strongly suspected, although its biological activity has not been demonstrated yet. Its presence in the gland, therefore, is only supported by radioimmunoassay data and immunocytochemical methods. Immunoreactive EPO is undetectable in the mouse SMG until the 30th day of postnatal life, increasing thereafter at a uniform rate and reaching adult levels by 50-60 days of age. The parallelism between its concentration in extracts of the gland, the size and relative proportion of GCT cells, could be accepted as indirect evidence for its localization in these cells. The rise in iEPO concentration in SMGs after androgen treatment, its fall following orchiectomy, and its reduction after duct ligation in proportion to the degree of degranulation of GCT cells lend support to the above hypothesis. Salivary secretions induced by either NE or ISO contain high levels of iEPO. A significant depletion of gland content is also observed. These two sets of data indicate that SMG exocrine iEPO secretion occurs and that this secretion is mediated by adrenergic receptors. The question whether the SMG also functions as an endocrine organ in relation to EPO can not be answered at present.