The pulsatile secretion of bioactive luteinising hormone in normal adult men.

We have studied bioactive and immunoreactive LH pulsatility in 11 normal men. The temporal relationship of plasma LH, testosterone, and FSH were also investigated. Blood samples were taken at 10-minute intervals for 6 h and bioactive LH levels were determined using an in vitro mouse Leydig cell bioassay. Testosterone, LH and FSH were determined by standard radioimmunoassay. Twenty-two bioactive LH pulses were detected (amplitude 8.5 +/- 4.9 IU/l, mean +/- SD) with a frequency of 2 +/- 0.8/6 h compared with only 18 immunoreactive LH pulses (amplitude of 3.6 +/- 1.8 IU/l) and a frequency of 1.6 +/- 0.5/6 h. Bioactive:immunoreactive LH ratios increased (p less than 0.01) from the preceding pulse nadirs (2.26, range 1.66-4.28) to the pulse peaks (2.71, range 1.99-4.67). Twenty FSH pulses (seen in all but one subject) of low amplitude (0.7 +/- 0.6, median 0.5 IU/l) were also present. There was a close temporal relationship between testosterone and FSH secretion with bioactive and immunoreactive LH pulses with lags of 30-60 and 0 min, respectively. We conclude that immunoreactive LH pulses are discordant from bioactive LH pulses in 18% of occasions. Further, the mean amplitude of bioactive episodes were approximately 2.6 times greater than that of immunoreactive episodes, whereas interpulse period and pulse duration were similar. The increase in bioactive:immunoreactive ratio at pulse peaks may indicate that in normal men LH pulses are enriched with a more biopotent form of the molecule.