[Indications for hormone therapy of female secretory sterility]

Female dysendocrine sterility has displayed a statistical incidence of 3.4% since 1967 in Milan's fertility and sterility centres. It is always marked by clear-cut clinical situations. Of these, particular interest is attached to anovulation (62.4% of cases), both with the cycle and with anovularity, ovarian micropolycystosis (2.7%), both as Stein ovary and as micropolycystic ovary, disturbances of ovary endocrine secretion: lutein deficiencies (21.2%) in the form of both brief and inadequate luteal phase. Treatment is aimed at possibly discontinuous reinstatement of ovulation. Clinical and pharmacological experiments over the last twenty years have put forward many "inducers". Mention is made of four personal approaches: --clinical employment of homologous gonadotropins (hMG + hCG), sequentially rather than paired, when poor gonadotropin secretion accompanied by insufficient endogenous oestrogenic activity is the main feature. Investigation from June 1964 to December 1981, coupled with monitorisation and personalisation of the treatment, initially through daily checks of total and fractionated oestrogenuria, and in recent years preferably through plasma 17-beta oestradiol or urinary enzyme determinations, has given a different slant to the reported disadvantages of gonadotropic management: hyperstimulation frequent multiple pregnancies, frequent multiple miscarriages; --employment of GnRH or its analogues (indications virtually those for paired gonadotropins). Some uncertainties however, exist with regard to the contraceptive action displayed by the agonist and antagonist analogues at certain doses, and with regard to the antigonadic action GnRH appears to have, both in the depression of oestrogen and progesterone production and in the arrest of follicular maturation an ovulation; --a preference for clomiphene among the antioestrogens in cases of primarily hypothalamic dysfunction and in ovarian micropolycystosis, provided endogenous oestrogenic activity is within normal limits; --a preference for hypoprolactinaemic drugs (bromoergocriptine, lysuride) in PRL-dependency, marked solely by an appreciable increase in serum LTH, screened as functional by means of selective tests; --experimentation of epimestrol, mainly in cases of sterility due to lutein deficiency.