STUDIES CONCERNING THE ABSORPTION AND DETOXIFICATION OF ANESTHETIC STEROIDS

¹ From the Department of Anatomy, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

Experiments on immature female albino rats revealed that there are great differences in the relative absorption rate of steroid hormones and hormone derivatives from the peritoneum and the intestine. However, progesterone, the acetate and succinate of desoxycorticosterone and pregnanedione, are equally well absorbed from the peritoneum and the intestine under the conditions of our experiments.

Hepatectomy was shown to sensitize the organism to the anesthetic action of all steroids examined. In the case of most of these compounds ablation of 75% of the liver tissue raised the sensitivity of the organism four to five times above that of intact controls but apparently the different steroids are not equally well detoxified by the liver.

Methyl-testosterone is less active as an anesthetic than testosterone when assayed on partially hepatectomized rats. This may be due to the delay in the speed of absorption occasioned by methylation; a delay which is advantageous for hormonal, but detrimental for anesthetic activity. In the case of oral administration to intact rats, methyl-testosterone is more active than testosterone, even as an anesthetic, apparently because the much greater hepatic detoxification of testosterone over-compensates for its more advantageous (rapid) absorption.