A CLINICAL ROUTINE-METHOD FOR THE QUANTITATIVE DETERMINATION OF GONADOTROPHINS IN 24-HOUR URINE SAMPLES

Recently both Albert (1956) and Loraine (1956) published comprehensive surveys on methods for the clinical determination of gonadotrophins in human non-pregnant urine. These surveys give a detailed discussion of requirements for a clinical routine procedure for gonadotrophin assays to which the reader is referred. Both authors make it clear that there are many problems connected with the preparation of urinary gonadotrophin extracts and that none of the methods so far developed fulfils ideal requirements. The greatest problem consists in obtaining extracts of a sufficiently low toxicity suitable for administering to animals to give a reliable assay of urines containing small amounts of gonadotrophin. In Albert's (1956) method based on kaolin adsorption of the gonadotrophins, rats are used in the assay. Rats are very resistant to toxic extracts but these animals are unsatisfactory as test animals for clinical assays as they are expensive and have a low sensitivity. In the kaolin-method