抄録
Neonatal female mice were given subcutaneous implants of the anterior pituitary from young male donors of the same inbred colony. Similar mice given an isograft of a piece of the submaxillary gland served as controls. When examined at the age of 1, 3 or 5 months, the isografted tissues were not recovered from any of these animals. Correlation analyses of estrous cycles were carried out. Studies of the autocorrelation function revealed that, in a majority of mice receiving pituitary isografts, their estrous cycles were irregular, characterized by prolonged vaginal estrus and/or prolonged diestrus continuing for periods of different length. The mean weight of the pituitary in situ was significantly smaller in these animals than that in the control mice. A similar fall of pituitary weights also occurred in mice ovariectomized on the day of pituitary implantation. This fact suggests that the pituitary isograft directly inhibits the growth of the pituitary in situ but not indirectly, via the ovaries. At 5 months of age, the ovaries of mice given pituitary grafts were enlarged, having so many corpora lutea, as compared with those of the control animals. This finding suggests that the neonatal pituitary implantation resulted in an increased secretion of gonadotropins from the pituitary in situ. In mice which had been given pituitary implants and showed prolonged, though not persistent, vaginal diestrus, the mammary glands contained well-developed branching ducts with a number of isolated alveoli. The pituitaries in situ appeared to have been permanently affected by neonatal pituitary isografts.
