This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (21)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

ROLAND DAVISON, M.D.; PETER KOETS, Ph.D.; WILLARD G. SNOW, M.D.; CAPTAIN LYMAN G. GABRIELSON

Arch Intern Med. 1950;85(3):365-388.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

PREGNENOLONE (⁵-pregnen-3 β-ol-20-one, melting point 190C.) was first obtained synthetically from stigmasterol by oxidation of the C20 side chain¹ and subsequently from cholesterol by the same method.² It has been isolated in small amounts from hog testes,³ but its isolation from human sources has not been reported.

Its relation to the physiologically important steroids in chemical structure and in pharmacologic properties has given rise to speculations about its possible role in the human organism as an intermediate substance in the synthesis and metabolism of these steroids.⁴ While chemically it can be regarded as a direct oxidation product of cholesterol, it can, in turn, be transformed to dehydroisoandrosterone by oxidation at C17, to progesterone by oxidation at C3 and to desoxycorticosterone by oxidation at both C3 and C21 (fig. 1).⁵

The resting adrenal cortex is rich in cholesterol esters, which are depleted when the experimental animal is . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
SAN FRANCISCO; MEDICAL CORPS, UNITED STATES ARMY

From the Departments of Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology, Stanford University School of Medicine, and the Letterman General Hospital.

Footnotes
This investigation was supported in part by grants from Stanford University Fluid Research Fund, the United States Public Health Service and the Schering Corporation.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?