Assays of Urine From Rhesus Monkeys for Pregnanediol and Other Steroids

The discovery of the relationship of progesterone to the pregnanediols (1) has proved important both theoretically and clinically. Since it has been shown that the titer of pregnanediol, present in human urine as sodium pregnanediol glucuronidate, reflects the rate of secretion of progesterone and hence the activity of the corpus luteum, it is possible roughly to determine the time of ovulation in the menstrual cycle (2-5). Since in the pregnant woman the pregnanediol level rises gradually in normal cases according to a certain broad curve, it is possible in pathological cases, as for example in habitual abortion, to diagnose the character of an existing hormonal deficiency (6-10). Inasmuch as the rhesus monkey has come to be the standard primate animal for the study of menstrual phenomena and of pregnancy, it seemed of interest to determine whether this species metabolizes progesterone as does man. Before we proceed to the discussion of the joint studies made by the present authors, it is necessary to report some previous assays of pregnancy urine made on monkeys of the Carnegie colony. These results are here reported for the first time with the permission of the experimenters, Dr. E. B. Astwood and Dr. Paul G. Weil. In 1937 Astwood made assays on the pooled urines from the pregnant monkeys listed in Table I and also the urines of six