Effects of iopanoic acid on thyroid hormone receptor, growth hormone production, and triiodothyronine generation from thyroxine in pituitary GH1 cells.

We have studied the effect of iopanoic acid (IOP), a radiographic contrast agent which inhibits T4 to T3 conversion, on thyroid hormone nuclear receptors, GH response to T4 and T3, and T4 5'-monodeiodination in GH1 cells, a rat pituitary cell line. IOP at concentrations higher than 10 microM inhibits iodothyronine binding to the nuclear receptor without changing the dissociation constant (Kd) (0.1 nM for T3 and 1 nM for T4), and reduces the GH response to 50 nM T4, 5 nM T3, or the combined effect of T4 and glucocorticoids. These results could be explained by an inhibition of protein synthesis which was reduced by more than 50% by 50 microM IOP. By contrast, nontoxic concentrations of IOP did not change the GH response to different doses of T4 ranging from 1 nM to 50 nM. We also examined T3 generation from T4 and found that the intracellular T3 levels of cells incubated with 50 nM T4 were almost as high as those of cells incubated with 5 nM T3 which induces a full GH response. Intracellular T3 levels were markedly reduced in the cells incubated with T4 and IOP, but GH production was not reduced despite these differences in T3 levels. Additionally, more than 40% of the nuclear receptor was occupied by T3 in cells incubated with T4, whereas more than 90% was occupied by T4 in cells receiving the same amount of T4 with 5 microM IOP. Our results suggest that the effect of T4 on GH production by GH1 cells could be attributed to an important extent to the T3 generated from it, whereas when T4 monodeiodination is strongly inhibited, most of the biological activity is a result of intrinsic T4 activity.