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Endocrinology Vol. 140, No. 8 3587-3593
Copyright © 1999 by The Endocrine Society


ARTICLES

Regulation of Lutenizing Hormone Secretion and Subunit Messenger Ribonucleic Acid Expression by Gonadal Steroids in Perifused Pituitary Cells from Male Monkeys and Rats1

Satoru Kawakami and Stephen J. Winters

Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Department of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213

Address all correspondence and requests for reprints to: Dr. Stephen J. Winters, Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Department of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Montefiore N919, 200 Lothrop Street, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213. E-mail: winters{at}med1.dept-med.pitt.edu


    Abstract
 Top
 Abstract
 Introduction
 Materials and Methods
 Results
 Discussion
 References
 
The mechanisms by which gonadal steroids regulate gonadotropin secretion remain incompletely understood. As previous studies suggest that the pituitary actions of testosterone (T) and estradiol (E) differ in male primates and rodents, we compared the effects of 10 nM T, 0.1 nM E, and 10 nM dihydrotestosterone (DHT) on the LH response to hourly pulses of GnRH as well as the GnRH receptor (GnRH-R) and LH subunit messenger RNA (mRNA) levels in dispersed pituitary cells from intact male monkeys and rats. T suppressed (P < 0.01) and E increased (P < 0.05) GnRH-stimulated LH secretion by rat pituitary cells. With monkey pituitary cells, on the other hand, there was no significant effect of either T or DHT on GnRH-stimulated LH secretion. In E-treated monkey cells, a period of initial enhancement (P < 0.05) was followed by significant suppression (P < 0.05) of LH secretion. GnRH-R mRNA was unchanged by T or E in either rat or monkey cells. T suppressed LHß (P < 0.01) and {alpha}-subunit (P < 0.01) mRNAs, whereas E increased {alpha}-subunit (P < 0.01), but did not alter LHß mRNA levels in rat cells. In monkey cells, however, neither T nor E affected LHß or {alpha}-subunit mRNA levels significantly. Our results identify different regulatory mechanisms by which testicular steroid hormones control LH secretion by the pituitary in male primates and rodents. We propose that the primary site of androgen negative feedback in the male primate is to restrain GnRH pulsatile secretion, whereas in the male rat T also decreases gonadotropin synthesis and secretion by directly affecting the pituitary. E suppresses GnRH-stimulated LH secretion in the primate pituitary, but amplifies the action of GnRH in the rat. Our data also reveal that the action of T to suppress LH secretion and subunit mRNA in male rats is not through decreased GnRH-R gene expression.


    Introduction
 Top
 Abstract
 Introduction
 Materials and Methods
 Results
 Discussion
 References
 
THE MECHANISMS by which gonadal steroids regulate gonadotropin secretion remain incompletely understood and are partly species specific. The negative feedback effect of testosterone (T) in the rat appears to occur in part at the level of hypothalamus, because suppression of gonadotropin secretion by T implants was overcome by exogenous GnRH pulses (1). However, studies of rat pituitary cells in static culture (2) or perifused with pulses of GnRH (3, 4, 5) revealed an additional suppressive effect of T on pituitary LH secretion. In men and in male monkeys, the negative feedback control of LH secretion by the testis is believed to be mediated primarily by a deceleration of hypothalamic GnRH pulse frequency (6, 7, 8, 9, 10). GnRH-deficient men receiving long term pulsatile GnRH replacement have been used as a human model to distinguish pituitary from hypothalamic feedback actions of gonadal steroids (11, 12, 13). In those studies, T suppressed LH secretion, but bioconversion of T to dihydrotestosterone (DHT) and estradiol (E) made it unclear whether the pituitary effect of administered T was mediated by T or DHT, by E, or by the combination of these hormones.

Most of our knowledge about gonadal steroid regulation of pituitary gonadotrophs at the cellular and molecular levels is from studies in rats, in which castration increases (14) and T replacement decreases (15) LH secretion, through changes in GnRH receptor (GnRH-R) binding (16) and gene expression (17), as well as gonadotropin subunit messenger RNAs (mRNAs) (18). The present experiments were performed to begin to understand the molecular mechanisms subserving the hormonal regulation of gonadotropin secretion in men using pituitary cells from male rhesus monkeys, a representative nonhuman primate. We have established an in vitro model of primary pituitary cultures perifused with pulses of GnRH to clamp GnRH stimulation and eliminate the effects of bioconversion of administered T into DHT and E in peripheral tissues, nonsteroidal gonadal factors such as inhibin, and hypothalamic modulators of GnRH action such as pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (19). A constant flow of medium around the cultured pituitary cells also reduces pituitary autocrine/paracrine factors such as activin and follistatin (20). To determine whether gonadal steroids affect the male primate pituitary directly, we examined the LH response to pulsatile GnRH stimulation as well as GnRH-R, LHß, and {alpha}-subunit mRNA levels in dispersed, perifused pituitary cells from intact adult male monkeys and compared the results to those in adult male rat pituitary cells.


    Materials and Methods
 Top
 Abstract
 Introduction
 Materials and Methods
 Results
 Discussion
 References
 
Pituitary cell culture
Freshly removed anterior pituitary glands from adult male rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) were obtained from Covance Research Primates (Alice, TX) and shipped on ice in HBSS (pH 7.3; Life Technologies, Grand Island, NY) containing 44 mM HEPES (Life Technologies). Seven-week-old male rats (Hilltop Lab Animals, Inc., Scottdale, PA) were anesthetized with halothane and killed by decapitation according to a protocol approved by the animal welfare and use committee of the University of Pittsburgh. The duration between removal of the pituitary from the animal and start of cell dispersal was approximately 14 h for monkeys and 1 h for rats. All media contained 100 U/ml penicillin G, 100 µg/ml streptomycin sulfate (Life Technologies, Inc.), and 2 mg/ml fluconizole (Pfizer, Inc., New York, NY). The methods used for the preparation of pituitary cell cultures were similar to those described previously (3). Briefly, anterior pituitary glands were minced into 16–20 (monkey) or 10–12 (rat) pieces, triturated in a siliconized 5-ml glass pipette, and treated for 60 min with 0.4% collagenase-dispase (Boehringer Mannheim, Indianapolis, IN) and 0.003% deoxyribonuclease I (Sigma Chemical Co., St. Louis, MO) in HBSS (pH 7.3) containing 0.4% BSA fraction V (Life Technologies, Inc.), 0.2% sucrose, and 44 mM HEPES. The cells were then digested with 0.25% pancreatin (Sigma Chemical Co.) in HBSS for 8 min and washed three times with DMEM (Life Technologies, Inc.) containing 5% dextran-charcoal-treated FCS (Life Technologies, Inc.) and 5% dextran-charcoal-treated calf serum (Life Technologies, Inc.). The yields were 3.8 ± 0.6 x 106 cells/monkey pituitary and 1.0 ± 0.05 x 106 cells/rat pituitary, and viability was 96 ± 1% based upon trypan blue dye exclusion.

Perifusion
Dispersed cells were allowed to attach to the surface of preswollen Cytodex 3 beads (Pharmacia Biotech, Piscataway, NJ) at a ratio of 5 x 106 cells:100 mg beads:30 ml DMEM containing 10% dextran-charcoal-treated FCS (control medium) in three 10-cm siliconized glass petri dishes at 37 C in 5% CO2-95% air. After 48 h, in Exp 1 the three cultures were treated with 10 nM T (Sigma Chemical Co.), 0.1 nM E (Sigma Chemical Co.), or control medium, respectively. These are physiological steroid levels for adult men. In Exp 2, after 48 h of preculture, one dish was treated with 10 nM DHT (Sigma Chemical Co.), and two dishes were treated with control medium. After an additional 48-h incubation, the cell/bead mixtures containing 2.8 ± 0.5 x 106 (monkey) or 5.6 ± 0.5 x 106 (rat) cells were packed into Acusyst-S 1.5-ml microchambers (Endotronics, Inc., Coon Rapid, MN) and perifused at 0.3 ml/min with DMEM (pH 7.3) supplemented with 14.8 mm NaHCO3 and 0.25% BSA, and gassed with 10% CO2-90% O2 using a computer-controlled perifusion system (Endotronics, Inc.). Steroid hormone treatments were continued during the perifusion. After 2-h perifusion with medium alone, pulses of 2.5 nM GnRH (Sigma Chemical Co.) were introduced for 1 min every 60 min for 8 h. This dose was selected because it produced a half-maximum LH secretory response (21). In Exp 2, the control and DHT-treated chambers received GnRH pulses, whereas the third chamber was perifused with control medium only. Fractions of the column effluents were collected at 10-min intervals and frozen at -20 C until determination of LH by RIA. At the completion of the perifusions (45 min after the final GnRH pulse), the cell/bead mixtures were suspended in 5 ml 4 M guanidinium thiocyanate-20 mM ß-mercaptoethanol solution and stored at -70 C for RNA extraction.

RIAs
The concentration of monkey LH in the perifusion effluent was estimated using reagents supplied by the National Hormone and Pituitary Program. The RIA system uses 125I-labeled recombinant cynomolgus LH (AFP6936A), anti-recombinant cynomolgus LH (AFP342994), and recombinant cynomolgus LH (rMoLH RP-1) as the standard. The average sensitivity was 15 pg rMoLH RP-1/tube. The within- and between-assay coefficients of variations were 7% and 15%, respectively. The concentration of rat LH was estimated with reagents from the National Hormone and Pituitary Program as described previously (22). Results are expressed in terms of the LH RP-2 standard. The minimal detectable dose was 0.07 ng/tube.

RNA extraction and Northern blot hybridizations
Total RNA was extracted by the guanidinium thiocyanate-phenol-chloroform procedure (23). The concentration of total RNA was estimated by measuring the OD at 260 nm using an Ultrospec 2000 spectrophotometer (Pharmacia Biotech). Sample purity was determined by calculating the ratio of OD at 260:280 nm, which was 1.7–2.1. GnRH-R, LHß, and {alpha}-subunit mRNA levels were determined by Northern analysis. Aliquots of each RNA preparation (10–20 µg) were subjected to electrophoresis in 1.2% agarose-formaldehyde gels, transferred to Nytran membranes (Schleicher & Schuell, Inc., Keene, NH), and cross-linked to the membranes by baking for 2 h at 80–90 C followed by UV irradiation for 2 min.

RNA and DNA probe preparations
Human and murine GnRH-R RNA probes were synthesized using MAXIscript In Vitro Transcription Kits (Ambion, Inc., Austin, TX) following the manufacturer’s protocol. The template complementary DNAs for human and murine GnRH-R were gifts from Dr. Stuart C. Sealfon (Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York, NY) (24) and Dr. Kevin J. Catt (NICHHD) (25), respectively. RNA probes were labeled with [{alpha}-32P]CTP (~800 Ci/mmol; New England Nuclear Research Products, Boston, MA) and added to the hybridization solutions at a concentration of 106 cpm/ml. The purified complementary DNAs for cynomolgus monkey LHß and {alpha} (from Drs. Christie Kelton and Scott Chappel), rat LHß (from Dr. James Roberts), rat {alpha} (from Dr. William Chin), and rat cyclophillin (from Dr. James Douglass) were labeled by the random primer method with [{alpha}-32P]deoxy-CTP (~3000 Ci/mmol; New England Nuclear Research Products) to specific activities of 8–10 x 108 cpm/µg using an oligolabeling kit (Pharmacia Biotech) and were added to the hybridization solutions at a concentration of approximately 5 ng/ml. The membranes were sequentially hybridized for 48–72 h with the above probes without stripping and were autoradiographed. Films were scanned with GS-700 Imaging Densitometer (Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., Hercules, CA) and analyzed using Molecular Analyst software (Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc.).

Data analysis
Data are presented as the mean ± SEM. The LH concentration in the perifusion fractions is expressed as the amount of hormone secreted by 1.0 x 106 cells/10 min. LH secretion was resolved into two components: interpulse secretion and GnRH-induced pulsatile release. Interpulse secretion is the mean of the three basal levels between successive GnRH pulses. Pulse amplitude was calculated by subtracting the mean of two interpulse levels just before and after a pulse from the average LH concentration in the three fractions collected after delivery of the GnRH pulse. Because the absolute LH levels differed among replicate experiments, the results for each interval of interpulse secretion and for each GnRH-induced pulse from T-, E-, or DHT-treated columns was expressed as a percentage of the corresponding value for the simultaneous control chamber (cells stimulated with GnRH but not treated with gonadal steroids). Then, a mean value for pulse amplitude and interpulse secretion for each perifusion was determined. Changes over time were analyzed by two-way ANOVA with post-hoc Student’s t test.

Because of variation in the specific activities of the radiolabeled probes, mRNA results for each replicate experiment were also analyzed independently and then compiled for statistical analysis. In each Northern analysis, the mRNA value from cells stimulated by GnRH but not treated with gonadal steroids was set at 100%, and the value from cells treated with T, E, or DHT was expressed as a percentage of that control value. Two-tailed Student’s t test for unpaired data was used for comparison of results between two groups. Differences in mRNA levels in the steroid-treated cells were compared with those in control cells by ANOVA and post-hoc Student’s t test.


    Results
 Top
 Abstract
 Introduction
 Materials and Methods
 Results
 Discussion
 References
 
Effects on GnRH-stimulated LH secretion
Hourly pulses of 2.5 nM GnRH initiated rapid and robust LH secretory episodes with essentially similar patterns in perifusions using monkey and rat pituitary cells. Figure 1Go illustrates representative LH secretory profiles when pituitary cells from monkeys or rats were treated with 10 nM T or 0.1 nM E beginning 48 h before and continuing during the perifusion. The results of replicate experiments, normalized to permit between-experiment comparison, are summarized in Table 1Go. Using rat cells, T suppressed (P < 0.01) GnRH-stimulated LH pulse amplitude to 61 ± 10% of the control value with no effect on interpulse secretion; consequently, significantly less LH (P < 0.05) was secreted during the perifusion by T-treated than by vehicle-treated rat cells stimulated by pulses of GnRH. E, in contrast, increased LH pulse amplitude more than 2-fold (P < 0.05) using rat cells. These findings confirm our previous results (4, 5). Interpulse secretion and total LH secretion were also increased by E treatment, but these increases were not statistically significant (P > 0.05).



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Figure 1. Effects of T or E on GnRH-stimulated LH secretion by cultured pituitary cells from adult male monkeys (A and B) and rats (C and D). {circ}, LH secretion by cells stimulated by pulses of GnRH without gonadal steroid; •, cells treated with GnRH and 10 nM T (A and C); {blacksquare}, cells treated with GnRH and 0.1 nM E (B and D).

 

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Table 1. Effects of T or E on LH secretion by pituitary cells perifused with hourly GnRH pulses

 
Using monkey pituitary cells, on the other hand, there was no significant effect of T on GnRH-stimulated LH pulse amplitude, interpulse secretion, or total LH secretion during the perifusion (Table 1Go). Because reduced bioconversion of T to DHT in primate pituitary cells is one explanation for the lack of effectiveness of T compared with results in rat cultures, we next assessed whether 10 nM DHT would modify GnRH-induced LH secretion from monkey pituitary cells. As shown in Fig. 2Go, DHT, even at a 10-fold higher concentration than the physiological plasma level (26), failed to suppress GnRH-induced LH secretion from monkey pituitary cells.



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Figure 2. Effects of DHT on GnRH-stimulated LH secretion by cultured pituitary cells from adult male monkeys. {circ}, LH secretion by cells stimulated with pulses of GnRH without gonadal steroid; {diamondsuit}, cells treated with GnRH and 10 nM DHT.

 
The effect of E on GnRH-induced LH pulsatile release from monkey pituitary cells was biphasic with respect to time. As shown in Fig. 1Go, a perfusion experiment extended to 10 h, and as summarized in Fig. 3Go, there was a period of initial enhancement (P < 0.05) after which LH pulse amplitude was significantly suppressed by E (P < 0.05). By contrast, there was no significant change in LH pulse amplitude over time in T-treated monkey cells. Moreover, as shown previously (3, 5), T-suppressed and E-enhanced GnRH-induced LH pulsatile release from rat pituitary cells was sustained over 8 h.



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Figure 3. Time course of the effects of 10 nM T (•) or 0.1 nM E ({circ}) on the amplitudes of GnRH-stimulated LH pulses. Data are the mean ± SEM from three to six independent perifusions as indicated in Table 1Go. *, P < 0.05 vs. control (the amplitudes of the simultaneous LH pulses from cells stimulated with GnRH but not treated with gonadal steroids), by ANOVA and post-hoc Student’s t test.

 
Because the cell dispersal was started approximately 14 h after removing the pituitary glands from monkeys, but the delay was 1 h for rats, an experiment was performed in which the start of the rat pituitary cell dispersal was delayed for 14 h. In this experiment, T suppressed GnRH-stimulated LH secretion just as in the previous series of experiments (not show).

Effects on GnRH-R, LHß, and {alpha}-subunit mRNA levels
Androgen treatment was reported to decrease GnRH-R binding in rat pituitary cell monolayer cultures (27). We therefore predicted that GnRH-R gene expression would be decreased by T only in cells from rats in which GnRH-stimulated LH secretion was suppressed, but not in pituitary cells from monkeys. This hypothesis proved, however, to be incorrect. As summarized in Fig. 4Go, GnRH-R mRNA was unchanged by T treatment in both rat and monkey pituitary cells at the completion of the 8-h perifusions. Levels of GnRH-R mRNA in rat pituitary cells were slightly increased by E treatment to 118 ± 13% of control, but this increase was not statistically significant (P > 0.05). E did not alter GnRH-R mRNA levels in monkey pituitary cells.



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Figure 4. Effects of T or E on GnRH-R, LHß, and {alpha}-subunit mRNA levels in monkey (black bars) or rat (white bars) pituitary cells at the completion of perifusion. In each Northern analysis, the value for mRNA from cells stimulated by GnRH alone was set at 100%. Then, values from cells treated with 10 nM T or 0.1 nM E were expressed as a percentage of that value. Data are the mean ± SEM from three to six independent perifusions as indicated in Table 1Go. *, P < 0.01 vs. control, by ANOVA and post-hoc Student’s t test.

 
We have previously reported that LHß and {alpha}-subunit mRNA levels are suppressed by T in rat pituitary cells stimulated with pulses of GnRH (5). In agreement with those results, T suppressed LHß (83 ± 4% of the control value; P < 0.01) and {alpha}-subunit (43 ± 3% of the control value; P < 0.01) mRNA levels in rat pituitary cells. E, on the other hand, increased {alpha}-subunit mRNA levels to 156 ± 5% of the control value (P < 0.01), but did not alter LHß mRNA levels in rat pituitary cells. In monkey pituitary cells, neither T nor E affected LHß or {alpha}-subunit mRNA levels significantly (Fig. 4Go).


    Discussion
 Top
 Abstract
 Introduction
 Materials and Methods
 Results
 Discussion
 References
 
The recent successful application of T as a male contraceptive (28) has resulted in a resurgence of interest in the mechanisms by which T regulates pituitary-testicular function. We found previously that T directly suppressed GnRH-induced LH secretion from rat pituitary cells (4, 5). Those results, together with the previous findings by others that T prevents the postcastration increase in GnRH-R in rats (16) and that DHT decreased GnRH-R in rat pituitary cell primary cultures (27) led us to hypothesize that the direct pituitary-suppressive effect of T in rats occurs through down-regulation of GnRH-R gene expression. We found, however, no effect of T on GnRH-R mRNA levels in perifused rat pituitary cells stimulated with pulses of GnRH. Although it remains possible that GnRH-R protein may be dissociated from the regulation of GnRH-R mRNA, suppression of GnRH-R in androgen-treated static cultures was observed with 100 nM DHT (27), which is an order of magnitude higher dose than the physiological androgen levels used in our experiments, so that other mechanisms may be operative. For example, T inhibits LH secretion induced not only by GnRH, but also by K+ and by the calcium ionophore A-23187 (29), and may affect GnRH-induced mobilization of intracellular calcium (30, 31). Therefore, alterations in postreceptor signal transduction mechanisms such as phospholipase C activity or in ion channel properties may underlie the inhibitory action of T on LH secretion.

We also confirmed that T down-regulates LHß and {alpha}-subunit gene expression in rat pituitary cells stimulated with pulsatile GnRH, indicating that T directly suppresses LH secretion in that species in part by decreasing LH biosynthesis. The action of GnRH to stimulate LHß and {alpha}-subunit gene expression in gonadotrophs appears to be via intracellular calcium and mitogen-activated protein kinase, respectively (32, 33), but whether these pathways are disturbed by androgens remains to be determined.

In monkey pituitary cells, on the other hand, we found no evidence for a direct suppressive effect of T on either GnRH-induced LH secretion or on LHß or {alpha}-subunit gene expression. In addition, DHT failed to suppress GnRH-induced LH secretion, suggesting that the absence of a direct androgen negative feedback action on the primate pituitary was not due to T metabolism. As androgen receptors (ARs) are present in the anterior pituitary of fetal (34) and adult male (35, 36) monkeys and appear to colocalize with immunoreactive LH in the human pituitary (37), it is likely that gonadotrophs in the monkey pituitary also express ARs, but this has not yet been tested. We were surprised to find that T did not down-regulate {alpha}-subunit gene expression in monkey pituitary cells because transcriptional repression of the human {alpha}-subunit gene by androgen was recently shown (38) to involve interaction between the AR and other DNA-binding proteins (39). As those findings were obtained using murine {alpha}T3 cells transfected with a human {alpha}-subunit transgene, it is possible that the coactivator proteins that are prerequisite for the AR-mediated repression of {alpha}-subunit gene transcription by T are expressed in rodent, but not in normal, monkey gonadotrophs.

Both E secreted by the testis and that produced by peripheral and central aromatization of testicular T are thought to participate in LH feedback inhibition (18, 40, 41, 42, 43). The effect of E on rat pituitary cells is biphasic, with initial inhibition of GnRH-stimulated LH secretion followed by facilitation at 24 h (43). In the present study, E treatment for 48 h stimulated GnRH-induced LH secretion from rat pituitary cells, in agreement with the previous findings of others in static cultures (29, 44) and our prior experiments in perifusion (3, 4). Both inhibition and facilitation are partly linked to changes in GnRH-Rs (43), but other mechanisms are operative, in that E treatment of GnRH-deficient (hpg) mice doubled GnRH-R number, but when combined with GnRH treatment produced values identical to those in normal littermates (45). E treatment of hypothalamus-pituitary-disconnected ewes stimulated with GnRH also increases LH secretion and subunit mRNA levels in part by increasing GnRH-R (46). We observed a slight increase in GnRH-R mRNA levels in E-treated rat pituitary cell cultures, which might contribute to the increased responsiveness to GnRH. Taken together, these observations demonstrate that the pituitary effect of E in rodents and ewes is to up-regulate GnRH-R and consequently to enhance GnRH-induced LH secretion, but the overall inhibitory effect of E on LH secretion and subunit gene expression in vivo appears to reflect suppression of hypothalamic GnRH secretion, which predominates over the stimulatory effect on the pituitary.

We found that E increased {alpha}-subunit, but not LHß, mRNA levels in rat pituitary cells perifused with GnRH pulses. In previous studies, E was found to stimulate the synthesis of LHß protein (29) as well as the transcription of the rat LHß gene through estrogen receptors with no effect on {alpha}-subunit mRNA synthesis in cultured pituitary cells from female rats (47). Discrepancies with our results may be explained by the use of pulsatile GnRH stimulation in the present study, a lower E dosage (0.1 nM in the present study vs. 1 or 20 nM), and/or the sex of the pituitary cell donors.

After an initial period of stimulation, E suppressed GnRH-induced LH secretion from monkey pituitary cells, by contrast, indicating a pituitary site of action for E negative feedback in the male primate. These results agree with studies in GnRH-deficient men receiving long term pulsatile GnRH replacement (13) in which mean plasma LH levels as well as LH pulse amplitude were decreased during E infusion. As a substantial amount of E is produced by peripheral aromatization of T in vivo, it follows from our results that infusion of T and E, but not of DHT, would suppress LH secretion in GnRH-deficient men replaced with exogenous pulsatile GnRH, as observed by Bagatell et al. (48). By studying steady state mRNA levels in perifused cells, we have to date been unable to explain E-mediated suppression of LH secretion in male primates by either a decrease in GnRH-R or gonadotropin subunit gene expression.

Notably, the inhibitory effect of E in perifused monkey pituitary cells was preceded by an initial enhancement of GnRH-stimulated LH secretion. These observations are consistent with experiments in which LH secretion from hypothalamus-lesioned female monkeys replaced with pulsatile GnRH was initially suppressed by E for approximately 2 days, followed by a massive discharge of LH for 1 day, and then finally suppressed again (49). The timing of our perifusion experiments corresponds to the second stimulatory and the third inhibitory phase of that in vivo observation. Moreover, in pituitary cell monolayer cultures from adult female monkeys, GnRH-induced LH secretion was initially suppressed by E administration, but then increased after 27-h exposure to E (44). Further, 72-h pretreatment with E increased LH secretion by cultured human fetal pituitary cells induced by a 3-h exposure to GnRH (50). That E induces LH surges after hypothalamic destruction in the female rhesus monkey (49, 51) further indicates a pituitary site of E action, but the precise mechanisms underlying the multiphasic effects of E on LH secretion remain unclear.

In summary, our results identify different regulatory mechanisms by which testicular steroid hormones control LH secretion in male primates and rodents as shown in Fig. 5Go. Taken together with previous results in the literature, we propose that the primary site of androgen negative feedback in the male primate is to restrain GnRH pulsatile secretion, whereas in the male rat, T also decreases gonadotropin synthesis and secretion by directly affecting the pituitary. E suppression of gonadotropin secretion in the male primate is partly due to suppression of GnRH-stimulated LH secretion, whereas E amplifies the action of GnRH in the rat. Our data also reveal that the action of T to suppress LH secretion and subunit mRNAs in male rats is not through decreased GnRH-R gene expression. The potential roles of GnRH binding and signal transduction through phospholipase C activity in the differential responses of primate and rodent gonadotrophs to T remain to be examined. Finally, the experiments presented herein have established pituitary cell cultures from nonhuman male primates stimulated with pulses of GnRH as a model for understanding gonadotropin gene regulation in normal and hypogonadal men.



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Figure 5. Schematic diagram of the proposed negative (-) and positive (+) feedback actions of testicular steroids in male primates and rodents.

 


    Acknowledgments
 
We acknowledge the expert technical assistance provided by Ms. Joyce Szczepanski and Mr. Dushan Ghooray. We also thank Dr. Tony M. Plant for providing monkey pituitary glands for the initial phase of this project, and Dr. Clifford R. Pohl and the staff of the Assay Core of the Center for Research in Reproductive Physiology of the University of Pittsburgh. RIA reagents were provided by the National Hormone and Pituitary Program, NIDDK.


    Footnotes
 
1 This work was supported by NIH Grant HD-19546. A portion of this work was presented as Abstract P2–62 at the 80th Annual Meeting of The Endocrine Society, New Orleans, Louisiana, June 1998. Back

Received December 11, 1998.


    References
 Top
 Abstract
 Introduction
 Materials and Methods
 Results
 Discussion
 References
 

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