Urinary Alpha-Ketolic Steroid Metabolites of Cortical Hormones Administered to Subjects With Adrenal Cortical Insufficiency 1

The analysis of urinary excretory products fol-lowing the administration of known compounds is one of the classical methods for the study of their metabolism. The developments in paper chromato-graphic (1) and micro-analytic (2) technics and the use of glucuronidase hydrolysis (3) have con-siderably decreased the difficulties of investigating steroid metabolism by this method. Using these newer technics, we have studied the urinary ex-cretion pattern of the major alpha-ketolic steroids after the administration of the six "active " adrenal cortical steroids to individuals with severe adrenal cortical insufficiency. We have found, as has been demonstrated for other steroids (4), that the ma-jor alpha-ketolic metabolites result from the re-duction in ring A of the steroid nucleus to the 3-alpha-hydroxy pregnane derivatives (the so-called "tetrahydro " form) and that the hydroxyl and ketone groups on carbon atom 11 are inter-convertible for corticosterone and 1 1-dehydrocorti-costerone as well as for hydrocortisone and corti-sone. METHODS