Diffusivity Summary of

Urinary gonadotrophins from post-menopausal patients were tested by two methods of bioassay. Measured by the response of the mouse uterus, the daily excretion of total gonadotrophin in the less severely disabled patients ranged from 10 to 200 mg. equivalents of HMG 20 A. Patients with active rheumatoid arthritis showed similar levels but some patients with severe disability due to anorexia, reticulosis or anaemia excreted very little gonadotrophin. The gonadotrophins were also measured in terms of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) using the ovarian response in mice treated with excess human chorionic gonadotrophin. It was found that they differed strikingly from HMG 20 A in being relatively more potent in the assay for FSH. This suggests that they contained relatively more FSH. The day-to-day fluctuation in the excretion of total gonadotrophin was compared with the differences between duplicate estimations. There were considerable quantitative fluctuations which could not be explained by the experimental errors. There was little evidence of major fluctuation in the quality of the gonadotrophins when this was assessed in a similar way