URINARY EXCRETION OF 17-HYDROXY-CORTICOSTEROIDS AND 17-KETOSTEROIDS IN HEALTHY SUBJECTS, IN RELATION TO SEX, AGE, BODY WEIGHT AND HEIGHT

Abstract

Numerous workers have established the fact that the urinary excretion of 17-ketosteroids and various corticosteroid fractions in healthy individuals is related to the sex and age of the subjects (Appleby & Norymberski, 1955, Diczfalusy et al., 1955, Hamburger, 1948, Heller & Shipley, 1951, Jensen, 1950, Kenigsberg et al., 1949, King & Mason, 1950, Kowalewski, 1950, Neukomm & Reymond, 1950, Norymberski et al., 1953, Pincus, 1955, Raices & Rivara, 1947, Robinson, 1948, Schou, 1951, Schüller, 1956, Viale et al., 1949, Wood & Gray, 1949, Würterle, 1953). Other authors have shown, or attempted to show, that there is also some relation of the excretion levels to the body weight, height, or surface (Forbes et al., 1947, Hamilton & Hamilton, 1948, Henriques & Henriques, 1946, Norval & King, 1950, Sprechler, 1951, Talbot et al., 1951). The present study extends this line of work to 17-hydroxy-corticosteroids (a fraction not to be confused with the 17,21-dihydroxy-20-oxo-corticosteroids determined by the colour reaction of Porter & Silber, 1950), and includes a comparison with the 17-ketosteroid excretion results obtained simultaneously. It would seem that the problem requires the use of more elaborate statistical methods than have been used in previous investigations in this field. In order to extract the maximum amount of information from the data, the powerful tool of multiple regression analysis has been employed.