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Acquired Adaptation to the Anesthetic Effect of Steroid Hormones

Department of Anatomy, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

Abstract

A number of steroid hormones as well as the artificial estrogen dihydroxydiethylstilbene cause anesthesia if given in sufficient dosage intraabdominally to the rat. The anesthesia thus produced by progesterone and desoxycorticosterone acetate (D.C.A.) is usually not complicated by any untoward overdosage symptoms. On the other hand, anesthetic doses of testosterone and dihydroxydiethylstilbestrol often cause tonic convulsions and sometimes fatal pulmonary edema.

In the case of daily intraabdominal injections, a high degree of adaptation to the anesthetic action of such steroids is rapidly acquired. Of the two most active anesthetic steroids, adaptation to progesterone is much more rapidly acquired than to D.C.A.

Rats which had been rendered resistant to the anesthetic action of a certain steroid usually exhibit a high degree of resistance to other steroids as well. Cholesterol, a steroid compound which does not produce anesthesia, is unable to impart such resistance to anesthetic steroids. These observations confirm the view that adaptation may be acquired not only to certain chemical substances but also to a certain pharmacological action (Selye '40b).

The high degree of resistance to the anesthetic action of steroid hormones, which has thus been produced by prolonged pretreatment, is not accompanied by the appearance in the blood of any demonstrable antihormones. It thus furnishes another example of an acquired hormone resistance without antihormone formation.