The Placental Gonadotrophin and Luteal Function in Monkeys (Macaca mulatta).

Abstract

Among the gonadotrophins, none has been studied more thoroughly than the active agent present in the blood and urine of pregnant women (Engle"5). Its chemical properties and the biological responses it is capable of inducing have been studied with great thoroughness, but as yet we are in total ignorance concerning the physiological significance of its presence in the pregnant primate. As recently as 1943, an editorial in the Lancet concludes with the remark that, "Chorionic gonadotrophin... is interesting as becoming an established active principle with no known function." Whatever the function of this substance may be it is definitely known to be of chorionic origin (Jones, Gey, and Gey22) and therefore should be considered as a hormone of pregnancy, a point that has been emphasized by a number of investigators. This fact places the chorionic gonadotrophin of the human being, and presumably that of the monkey (Hamlett,"6 Delfs11) and chimpanzee (Zuckerman,27