Effect of chronic intravenous injection of steroid hormones on body weight and composition of female rats.

The effects of the constant infusion with mini-osmotic pumps of several steroid hormones on body weight, energy balance and protein/lipid/water composition in young female rats has been studied for a period of 15 days. Despite unchanged food consumption, progesterone strongly induced fat deposition, with higher protein accrual efficiency coupled with lowered energy losses through thermogenesis. Estrogens lowered body weight but maintained higher protein levels and protein accrual rates; beta-estradiol induced the loss of lipid and diminished food intake. Heat production was unchanged or lower in all estrogen-treated animals; beta-estradiol had a more marked effect on body weight (through food intake, heat production and lipid mobilization/storage combined) than estrone. Testosterone and 5-androstenediol increased the proportion of protein, but none of them had a significant effect on lipid deposition or heat production. Nortestosterone, increased energy expenditure, fuelled in part by a higher food ingestion, a trait shared by 4-androstenedione, but not by the other androgens. The effect of androgens on body weight may thus be a combination of their actions on a) food intake, b) efficiency of protein deposition and c) activation of heat production or of lipid (energy) storage. Practically all increased the efficiency of protein deposition. Nortestosterone increased heat production. Androstenedione increased lipid storage. Dehydroepiandrosterone did not decrease body weight or metabolic rate. Cortisol depressed heat production and food intake, with a net loss of weight. Cortisol and cortisone did not increase protein deposition, but corticosterone did; deoxycorticosterone showed a high efficiency of protein deposition and increased the size of fat stores, also increasing the metabolic rate by a mean 26% versus controls, compared with a reduction of about the same magnitude induced by cortisol. The data presented suggest that cortisol-cortisone and corticosterone may represent two distinct groups of glucocorticoids.