Role of the Pineal Gland in Growth Restraint of Adult Male Rats by Light and Smell Deprivation

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Abstract
The effects of various surgical manipulations in adult male rats were studied in order to determine what effect reductions in sensory stimuli (i.e., light and smell) would have on parameters of growth. Rats that lacked either sight or smell grew subnormally and possessed decreased levels of radioimmunoassayable pituitary growth hormone (GH) when compared with sham-operated rats. If combined sensory deprivation was introduced, very poor growth was observed, with marked reductions in pituitary GH. The pineal gland plays an important role in the regulation of growth in these sensory-deprived rats, since blind-pinealectomized and blind-anosmic-pinealectomized animals showed more nearly normal growth than blind and blind-anosmic rats and possessed greater amounts of pituitary GH than their respective controls. Plasma GH levels, due to their variability, yielded little insight into the growth of sensory-deprived rats. It is concluded that sight and smell are essential for normal growth and that the pineal gland can regulate growth of sensory-deprived rats, either directly by modifying pituitary growth hormone stores or indirectly by way of pituitary gonadotropins or by some other endocrine pathway.

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