Patterns of Hormonal Signals and Hormone Action

Abstract

One of the many new insights afforded by the advent of radioimmunoassays has been the recognition that the pattern of adenohypophyseal hormone secretion is episodic rather than continuous, as had been previously supposed. This pattern is particularly striking in the case of the gonadotropic hormones, which are delivered to the circulation as discrete, rhythmic pulses in all mammals studied to date.¹ From the time they were first described, these pulsatile discharges of gonadotropin were thought to be due to intermittent stimulation by the hypothalamic gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), which reaches the gonadotropes of the anterior pituitary gland by way of the . . .