A young male who presented with isolated bihormonal gonadotrophin deficiency is described, Basal levels of LH and FSH were low and there was no response to clomiphene citrate or LHRH. The remaining anterior pituitary function was intact. The administration of a combination of human menopausal gonadotrophin and human chorionic gonadotrophin caused testicular maturation with spermatogenesis and f...

Choriionic gonadotrophin is produced by trophoblastic tissue. In pregnancy raised serum levels are associated with increased urinary excretion. The excretion of human chorionic gonadotrophin (HCG) is significantly raised within one week of the first missed period, reaches a peak by the tenth week, and falls thereafter to the twentieth week (Fig. 1). In the second half of pregnancy levels fluctu...

Cryptorchidism is common in infants born preterm, yet the mechanism for its occurrence is still debated. In a study of 21 premature babies with cryptorchidism at 18 months post-term and 21 case matched controls, cryptorchid preterm infants failed to show the normal rise in plasma testosterone in the first postnatal week. This rise is thought to relate to residual maternal human chorionic gonado...

TGFβ superfamily proteins, acting via SMAD (Sma- and Mad-related protein)2/3 pathways, regulate placental function; however, the role of SMAD1/5/8 pathway in the placenta is unknown. This study investigated the functional role of bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)4 signaling through SMAD1/5 in terminal differentiation of primary chorionic gonadotropin (CG)-secreting trophoblast. Primary equine tr...

Immortalized cell lines have many potential experimental applications including the analysis of molecular mechanisms underlying cell-specific gene expression. We have utilized a recombinant retrovirus encoding the simian virus-40 (SV-40) large T antigen to construct several immortalized cell lines of equine chorionic girdle cell lineage - the progenitor cells that differentiate into the equine ...

The role of progesterone in capillary permeability, which may be causally related to the pathophysiology of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), was investigated in immature rats. A total of 96 female Wistar rats aged 22 days were given 10 IU of equine chorionic gonadotrophin daily for 4 consecutive days, and given 30 IU of human chorionic gonadotrophin on the fifth day to produce hypersti...