PERIODIC CHANGES IN BLOOD ESTROGEN

IT HAS BEEN amply demonstrated that there is an hormonal interrelationship between the anterior pituitary and the ovary. The follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) produced by the pituitary is necessary for the elaboration by the ovary of estrogenic hormone (EH). In general, the greater the concentration of blood FSH, the greater the rate of production of EH. The influence of concentration of EH on the secretion of FSH into the circulation is more obscure, but, irrespective of the exact mechanism, there is agreement that increasing blood EH concentration reduces the concentration of biologically effective FSH in the blood. (1-6). The two relations—the effect on EH production of FSH, and the effect on FSH of EH—have prompted various workers to suggest an hypothesis for explaining the periodic monthly fluctuations in blood EH observed in normal menstruating women. Moore (7), Moore and Price (8), and independently, Brouha and Simonnet (9) first propounded it in 1930.