Pincus S M, Gevers E F, Robinson I C, van den Berg G, Roelfsema F, Hartman M L, Veldhuis J D
Division of Neurophysiology and Neuropharmacology, National Institute for Medical Research, London, United Kingdom.
Am J Physiol. 1996 Jan;270(1 Pt 1):E107-15. doi: 10.1152/ajpendo.1996.270.1.E107.
In humans, serum growth hormone (GH) concentrations are significantly higher in women than in men, but the neuroendocrine mechanisms that underlie such gender differences are not known. We compared normal episodic GH secretion in males and females in three distinct settings: two human studies employing quite different assay techniques (immunoradiometric assay and a high-sensitivity immunofluorimetric method) and a rat study. To quantify the amount of regularity in data, we utilized approximate entropy (ApEn), a scale- and model-independent statistic. In each study, females exhibited significantly greater statistical irregularity in GH concentration series than their male counterparts (P < 10(-3) for each human study, P < 10(-6) for the rat study), implying that mass and mode of GH secretion are regulated differently in males and females. The regularity comparisons indicated complete gender separation (100% specificity and sensitivity) for the rat study and nearly complete separation for the immunofluorimetric assay study. The consistency and statistical significance of these findings suggest that this gender difference may be broadly based within higher animals and that this may be readily evaluated objectively by analysis of ApEn.
在人类中，女性血清生长激素（GH）浓度显著高于男性，但导致这种性别差异的神经内分泌机制尚不清楚。我们在三种不同情况下比较了男性和女性正常的GH脉冲式分泌：两项采用截然不同检测技术（免疫放射分析和高灵敏度免疫荧光法）的人体研究以及一项大鼠研究。为了量化数据中的规律性，我们使用了近似熵（ApEn），这是一种与尺度和模型无关的统计量。在每项研究中，女性GH浓度系列的统计不规则性均显著高于男性对应者（每项人体研究P < 10⁻³，大鼠研究P < 10⁻⁶），这意味着男性和女性的GH分泌量和模式受到不同调节。规律性比较表明，大鼠研究实现了完全的性别区分（特异性和敏感性均为100%），免疫荧光分析研究实现了近乎完全的区分。这些发现的一致性和统计学意义表明，这种性别差异可能在高等动物中广泛存在，并且通过分析ApEn可以很容易地进行客观评估。
