Sexual disturbances in diabetics were frequently observed. Endocrine studies of these patients revealed that almost all had decreased urinary excretion of pituitary gonadotropin. But the cause of the decrease of pituitaty gonadotropin remained unknown. So histological examinations of pituitary glands were also performed.
The urinary excretion of pituitary gonadotropin was determined in fifteen diabetics. The urinary gonadotropin was absorbed in kaolin and finally measured by the increase in weight of the infantile mouse uterus according to Matsushima's method. Determinations of gonadotropin in fifteen diabetics revealed only two patients with values over normal limits, other patients showed values under normal limits.
Histological examinations of the pituitary glands which obtained from eleven cases of diabetics and seventeen cases of other disease for controls were performed. These were selected from the routine necropsy cases at the Department of Pathology, Tohoku University School of Medicine. All cases known to have had endocrine disease without diabetics were excluded. The pituitary were fixed in 10% neutral formol saline and sectioned at a thickness of 4 micra in the horizontal plane. These sections were stained by Hematoxylin-Eosin, PAS-Orange-G Methylblue, Aldehyde-Fuchsin-Goldner, Masson-Goldner, and Iron-PAS stain. In diabetes mellitus there were a significant increase in the proportion of acidophils and a significant decrease in the proportion of basophils, especially of delta cells.
Results of the histological examinations of pituitary glands and measurements of urinary excretion of pituitary gonadotropins suggest that sexual disturbances in diabetics are frequently due to hypogonadotropic hypogonadism and that the delta cells are the source of the pituitary gonadotropins.
