Steroid Hormones 87 



Especially in the first of these two areas, great effort has been made 

 to determine whether there are present in the urine abnormal steroid- 

 hormone metabolites which would help to identify the biochemical 

 nature of the abnormality associated with the disease. 



With the increase in precision of methods it has been discovered 

 that steroids which were originally believed to be qualitatively char- 

 acteristic of neoplastic and connective tissue disease are also present 

 in the urine of control subjects. Thus the differences are more likely 

 to be quantitative and hence less easily definable. Although only frag- 

 mentary data are available, it does seem at present that the catabolism 

 of steroids by neoplastic and homologous normal tissues is qualitatively 

 the same. 



In considering the urinary excretion of steroids, it has been cus- 

 tomary to discuss groups, classified on the basis of the operations 

 employed in their isolation. In a rough way this classification is useful 

 in the detection of gross abnormalities; however, it is generally recog- 

 nized that individual compounds in these groups are derived from 

 precursors elaborated by either the adrenal cortex or the gonads. 

 Therefore, it would seem profitable to attempt to break down the 

 chemical barriers and to consider the excretion products in terms of 

 the source organ. The index of physiological activity of the adrenal 

 cortex can best be estimated at present from a consideration of excre- 

 tory products which are distributed in several major groups but can 

 still be related to the primary hormonal secretions with a reasonable 

 degree of certainty. In the case of the gonads there is less scattering, 

 but urinary metabolites of ovarian and testicular hormones are not 

 found uniquely in any one group. 



It would be desirable to examine excretion patterns both from the 

 standpoint of estimation of the nature and quantities of gonadal and 

 adrenal hormones secreted under various conditions and from the 

 standpoint of the detailed catabolic fate of the primary secretion 

 products. At present only the latter approach is susceptible to direct 

 attack, but by means of this attack it should be possible ultimately 

 to ascertain whether the abnormalities in disease are associated with 

 biosynthesis, with catabolism, or with both. Even though a significant 

 amount of the hormone secreted may be degraded to non-steroid prod- 

 ucts, it would seem possible to establish characteristic excretion pat- 

 terns if representative compounds of each of the chemically definable 

 groups of compounds are subjected to quantitative measurement. This 

 would permit the definition of parameters which could be used to char- 

 acterize the population of normal individuals and to compare this 



