Intestinal lactase activity, which is high in the infant rat intestine but falls to a low level by the end of the third week, fails to decline in animals hypophysectomized at the age of 6 days. Treating these animals with thyroxine lowers lactase activity to the control level at 24 days, but cortisone is only partly effective. Thyroidectomy at 6 days also results in persistence of high lactase activity; thyroxine again is more effective than cortisone in reducing activity. The thyroid gland appears to play a previously unsuspected role in intestinal maturation.
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Yeh et al. (1974) studied this question.
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