1980 Volume 27 Issue 1 Pages 59-64
The present report investigated steroidogenesis in vitro in testis tissues obtained from two boys aged8months and4years with ambiguous external genitalia and male vagina, and a 4-year-old boy with true precocious puberty. Histologically, testes of the former two boys are still immature and the testis of the last one contains differentiated Sertoli cells and primary spermatocytes, but no mature Leydig cells are recognized in any of them. In each testis, 17β-hydroxysteroid oxidoreductase is active for androstenedione in the presence of an excess amount of NADPH, while Δ5-3β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase and Δ4-steroid 5α-reductase activities are limited.17β-Hydroxylase and C17-20 lyase are significantly active in each testis and are enhanced in the testis of the boy with precocious puberty. Although the testis tissue used in the present study may not be biologically normal and the number of cases investigated is still limited, the above results indicate that active 17β-hydroxysteroid oxidoreductase is present in immature human testes and that Δ5-3β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase may become active in the human testis at the advanced stage of the development of testicular function during the puberty.
