THE RESPONSE OF THE TESTIS OF THE HAMSTER TO CHRONIC TREATMENT WITH DIFFERENT ESTROGENS¹

Age and Seasonal Changes in the Testis of the Ferret

“…The PAS-positive substance in the acrosome of ferret germ cells was a polysaccharide with 1, 2 glycols, and appears to be similar to that observed in a hemipteran insect by LEUCHTENBERGER and SCHRADER (1950). It was not glycogen, since pretreatment with saliva did not change the PAS reaction, acetylation of the 1, 2 glycols by acetic anhydride gave a negative PAS reaction, and extraction of glycolipids with hot methanol-chloroform exerted no influence on the positive PAS reaction.…”

“…BACON and KIRKMAN (1955) have suggested that in the hamster treated with estrogens, testicular atrophy may pursue two pathways of degeneration which they termed 'solid atrophy' and 'cystic atrophy' respectively. The former type was charac-terized by a reduction in the diameter of tubules, whose seminiferous epithelium was composed of Sertoli cells, a few spermatogonia and primary spermatocytes.…”

Effect of Lut-Ovocyclin on Some Testicular Enzymes of the Indian Desert Gerbil <I>Meriones hurrianae</I> Jerdon

“…Selye and Friedman (1941) concluded that the arrest in spermatogenesis is caused by an indirect action of these steroids inhibiting the secretion of pituitary gonadotrophins and that these steroids do not directly affect spermatogenesis. Bacon and Kirkman (1955) after the administration of diethylstilbestrol , a-estradiol and ethinyl estradiol in hamster testis observed severe testicular atrophy in animals treated for the shortest period , but fenocylin had no effect on the histology of the tubules . They further observed that longer periods of treatment did not reduce testis weight significantly, but led to unexpected histological modifications in the remaining tissue .…”

“…Pallos (1941) and Gardener (1949) observed that estradiol when injected to young rats prevented the testicular descent, produced atrophy and inhibited spermatogenesis. Lynch (1952) noticed normal Leydig cells in animals treated with estrogens, while Marescaux (1950), Chome (1956) and Bacon and Kirkman (1955) observed testicular atrophy after estrogen treatment. The histological details of the testis after the administration of estrogens has been extensively studied, but there is practically no information about the fate of different enzymes associated with the cell inclusions during the different stages of spermatogenesis.…”

Modern concepts of the structural bases for the reparative regeneration of the mammalian and human testis

“…These facts cease to be unexplainable or artifacts in light of the concept of the testis of pubertal animals as an unstable dynamic structure [7,8]. Many authorities have described characteristic morphological changes of the rete testis (the transformation of its epithelium from squamous to columnar or cuboidal, the onset of mitoses in its cells and the formation near the rete testis of the seminiferons tubules structurally corresponding to immature seminiferous tubules) which accompany the development of destructive processes in the tubules after various damaging factors [9,18,29,35]. However, only Raitsina considered the rete testis as a regeneration zone of the testis and thereby explained the existence of reactive changes of the rete testis after trauma and seasonal factors [I6].…”