Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
THE EVIDENCE now available indicates that the urinary 17-ketosteroids are the excretion products of substances produced by the adrenal cortex and the testicles. In women, therefore, the measurement of the 17-ketosteroids is considered to be an index of some phases of the activity of the adrenal cortex alone; in men, it is an index of the combined activities of the adrenal glands and the testicles. The evidence for these conclusions was obtained from studies on eunuchs (1), on normal and castrate women (2, 3), on normal men (4), on patients who had adrenal cortical tumors and those who had adrenal hyperplasia (5–8), on patients who had Addison's disease (8, 9), on a man who had an interstitial cell tumor of the testicle (10) and on hypogonad men receiving testosterone (11,12). The exact significance of the total urinary 17-ketosteroids or of their individual components can not be assessed without more fundamental knowledge of their precursors and intermediary metabolism.
Engstrom et al. (Wed,) studied this question.