Response to Vitamin D in Adrenalectomized Animals

Abstract

IN recent years there have been repeated attempts to establish that the action of vitamin D is in some way mediated through the adrenal glands. Perhaps the first such suggestion came from Raoul and Gounelle¹, who described an increase in an ultra-violet absorbing material in the adrenal glands of rats given vitamin D. The same authors also reported that the adrenals accumulate a large fraction of the administered vitamin shortly after supplementation. Neither Kodicek et al.², Blumberg et al.³ nor Norman and DeLuca⁴, using either ¹⁴C- or tritium-labelled vitamin D, were able to confirm the latter observation. In fact, in this laboratory no more than 0.3 per cent of the labelled vitamin administered has ever been found in the adrenals.