PubMed · 9238264
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I E Messinis. 1997-06-17. Luteal function--luteolysis.. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1997.tb52138.x
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The search for the corpus luteum hormone progesterone took more than three decades and the efforts of many scientists all over Europe and the USA. In 1934, after a dramatic neck-and-neck scientific race, four research groups independently from each other reported on the successful isolation of the pure substance. Two of the groups were from the then-German cities of Breslau and Danzig, the others were from the USA and Switzerland. Possibly, the Breslau group had already had the purified hormone as early as 1933. At that time, gynecologist Ludwig Fraenkel (1870-1951) had been their 'spiritus rector' for more than three decades. It was Fraenkel himself who at the beginning of the century, in examining a hypothesis of the anatomist Gustav Jacob Born (1851-1900), had provided experimental proof for an endocrine function of the corpus luteum. Later on, Fraenkel enlisted the help of chemist Karl Heinrich Slotta (1895-1987) in the purification of the hormone. This took place after important requirements for the isolation and for the semiquantitative determination of the hormone (e.g. Corner-Allen test) had been established elsewhere. Also belonging to the Breslau research group were Erich Fels (1897-1981) and Heinrich Ruschig (born in 1906). Fels was an assistant to Fraenkel, Ruschig a PhD candidate directed by Slotta. Shortly after the group had succeeded in purifying progesterone, the Breslau group was broken apart by the National Socialist's racial policies: Fraenkel, Fels and Slotta were forced into emigration.
Endothelial cells are the most abundant cell type in the corpus luteum (CL), and changes in blood vessels have been proposed to play a pivotal role in CL regression. We have studied quantitatively the changes in the human granulosa-luteal microvasculature in CL of various ages: young (Days 17-19 of the cycle), mature (Days 20-24), old (Days 25-27), early regressing (follicular phase of the following cycle), and late regressing (luteal phase of the following cycle). Blood vessels were identified by immunohistochemical staining for the endothelial cell marker CD34. Because of the anisotropy of blood vessels, both vertical and transverse sections of the granulosa-lutein layer (GLL) were used to estimate relative (volume, surface, and length densities) and absolute (mean cross-sectional area) vascular variables. Full luteinization from young to mature CL was accompanied by a 61% increase in the mean cross-sectional area of vascular profiles and a 52% increase in the mean volume of granulosa-lutein cells, as an estimator of changes in the volume of the GLL. In old and early regressing CL, there was a progressive increase in relative structural vascular variables, due to the shrinkage of the GLL, whereas the mean cross-sectional area of capillaries showed a 53% decrease from mature to old CL. Finally, in late regressing CL, there was a decrease in most relative structural variables, in spite of the increasingly shrunken GLL. The decrease in the capillary diameter found at the late luteal phase most likely leads to a decreased blood flow, and early changes in blood vessels could initiate and/or accelerate CL regression.
Technological advances during the past decade have yielded new knowledge of luteal function and its regulation. A number of new substances with luteotrophic and lutcolytic properties have been identified in the corpus luteum, and the picture which emerges of the mechanisms responsible for physiological luteolysis is becoming increasingly complex. As luteal function/regulation during the menstrual cycle in the absence of pregnancy differs both from that in normal pregnancy, and from that in pathological pregnancy, these advances in our knowledge should prove clinically useful, particularly with regard to the early diagnosis and management of pathological pregnancy.