Studies on the physiological chemistry of the salivary glands. XLIII. On the functional correlation between salivary glands and other endocrine organs. I. Preliminary studies on the correlation between salivary glands and thyroid gland of rats.

It has been reported that the decrease in weight of the submaxillary gland and the atrophy of the serous tubules were observed in thyroidectomized rat and these changes were recovered with the administration of thyroxine (Leblond et al., 1948), the administration of thiourea caused the atrophy of the tubular part of the submaxillary gland in rat and this response was probably due to the diminution of the thyroid secretion(Raynaud, 1950;Arvy et al. , 1950a, b;Gabe, 1950), thyroxine caused the hypertrophy of the tubular part of the submaxillary gland in castrated mouse(Raynaud, 1950) but this stimulating action of thyroxine to the gland was much influenced by the removal of adrenals of the castrated mouse (Raynaud, 1953). The influences of the salivary glands upon the function of the thyroid gland have been also studied, but the results obtained are much confused. Kuramitsu (1954)and Wase et al. (1956a, b)indicated the reduced thyroid activity in sialoadenectomized animal. But there are the other contradictory evidences that no significant effects of sialoadenectomy were observed on the thyroid function (Newcomer, 1956;Watts, 1956; Collins et al. , 1956). Kirkwood(1954a, b)reported the important role of the salivary glands in the metabolism of thyroid hormone, but Chaikoff et al. (1955)and Ruegamer(1955)could not confirm those observations. This paper is concerned with the preliminaly studies on the effect of the experimental hypothyroidism caused by some antithyroid drugs on the salivary glands and the iodine metabolism of the thyroid gland of chronically sialoadenectomized animal using radioisotope.