Effect of food manipulation on the GnRH-LH-estradiol axis of young female rats.

Female rats were prevented from growing and developing reproductively by restricting their food intake from the time they reached 80-85 g (27-29 days of age) until they were 2 mo old. A return to ad libitum feeding then typically yielded the pubertal ovulation during the third or fourth dark period. Ad libitum feeding for 48 h increased the frequency of luteinizing hormone (LH) pulsing in ovariectomized females. This treatment also depressed the level of circulating estradiol in ovariectomized females implanted with Silastic capsules. It had no effect on the rate at which estradiol was cleared from the blood in a 1-h test, however, nor did it affect the pool of assayable gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) in the hypothalamus, the pool of assayable LH in the pituitary, the response of the pituitary to GnRH, or the rate at which LH was cleared from the blood. In toto, the present results suggest that food restriction inhibits pubertal development by acting rather specifically on GnRH secretion via an ovarian steroid-independent pathway. The presumed supplemental role for enhanced negative-feedback sensitivity could not be evaluated because of the aberrant results with encapsulated estradiol.