ASPECTS OF HUMAN PHARYNGEAL HYPOPHYSIS IN NORMAL AND ANENCEPHALIC FETUSES AND NEONATES AND THEIR POSSIBLE SIGNIFICANCE IN MECHANISM OF ITS CONTROL

  • 1 January 1978
    • journal article
    • research article
    • Vol. 127  (SEP) , 65-81
Abstract
Aspects of the pharyngeal hypophysis in normal and anencephalic human fetuses and neonates were described. Volumetric and histological changes in the normal pharyngeal hypophysis similar to those observed previously in the adult were noted. The sellar and pharyngeal hypophyses develop in parallel during intrauterine life but the latter has reached its maximum development by the time of birth. The control of the pharyngeal hypophysis is mediated through factors in the blood. Around birth and after middle age it may well be mediated through factors carried in a trans-sphenoidal extension of the hypothalamo-hypophyseal portal venous system, the female being the more responsive to such control. In earlier fetal life and in earlier adult life the control appears to be mediated through the systemic blood. From a study of the anencephalic material it appears that the individual cells of the pharyngeal hypophysis are capable of marked response to a specific endocrine imbalance but the capacity of the pharyngeal hypophysis as a whole to compensate significantly for deficiencies of the sellar adenohypophysis is strictly limited by its inability to hypertrophy to any marked degree.