The Role of the Endocrine Glands in Ketosis—I. The Ketosis of Fasting †

The influence of the pituitary body on fatty acid and ketone body metabolism has excited interest ever since Anselmino and Hoffman demonstrated the ketogenic effect of an anterior pituitary extract in 1931.' The extensive literature which followed has been reviewed in two recent publications.10"' The development of ketosis is generally assumed to require an intact adenohypophysis,' and both the adrenal and pituitary are said to play vital roles in the mobilization of fat to the liver under a variety of circumstances.' Although ketogenesis has been well studied and found to be diminished in the hypophysectomized-depancreatized animal,' surprisingly few data are available on the fasting hypophysectomized animal without diabetes and these were obtained from animals fasted only 18 to 36 hours' " or from fat-fed animals." Some of those reports suggested that the fasted hypophysectomized animal could develop ketonemia, although it was generally agreed that the degree of ketonemia was less than normal or delayed in its onset. There are even fewer data concerning the relative roles of pituitary hormones and endocrine target gland hormones in the ketosis of fasting in the hypox animal. Bondy and Wilhelmi9 investigated this subject, but their data on the effect of various hormones upon ketogenesis in liver slices from hypophysectomized rats were obtained from animals fasted for only 18 hours.