Treatment of amenorrhea: II. Effects of anterior pituitary-like hormone from the urine of pregnant women. Eleven trials in four patients

Abstract

An attempt was made to detect in human beings an ovary-stimulating effect in anterior pituitary-like, pregnancy urine extract. To four married women, aged twenty-three, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, and thirty-three, with amenorrhea for one to two and one-half years, were given total doses of either antuitrin-S or follutein, varying in stated potency from 1,500 R. U. to 3,500 R. U. The individual dose was 500 R. U. given intramuscularly on alternate days (Table I). Biopsies of the endometrium were made sometimes before, sometimes during, and in each case after treatment. In only two instances was there any change in the endometrium which would suggest increased ovarian function. In only one case (Exper. 9) was the treatment followed by the appearance of a progestin-stimulated endometrium. There is some question, in even this one case, that the ovary was actually stimulated by the injections as a repetition of the experiment failed to give a similar result. Three other experiments with this same patient were negative. In only two cases was there any flow following the treatment, and in one of them it was from an atrophic endometrium, in a patient whose flowing mechanism seemed very unstable during treatment with various hormones. (Case 2.)