Assessment of urine and fecal testosterone excretion in Chinchilla lanigera males.

BUSSO JM,; PONZIO MF,; DABBENE VG,; FIOL DE CUNEO M,; RUIZ RD.

ANIMAL REPRODUCTION SCIENCE

Elsevier Science.

Lugar: Gainesville, Florida, USA.; Año: 2005 vol. 86 p. 339 - 339

0378-4320

p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Endemic chinchilla (Chinchilla spp.) populations are nearly extinct in the wild (South America). In captive animals (Chinchilla lanigera and C. brevicaudata), reproduction is characterized by poor fertility and limited by seasonal breeding patterns. Techniques applied for studying male reproductive physiology in these species are often invasive and stressful (i.e. repeated blood sampling for sexual steroids analysis). To evaluate endocrine testicular function, the present experiments were designed to (a) determine the main route of testosterone excretion (14C-testosterone infusion in four males); (b) validate urine and fecal testosterone metabolite measurements (HPLCwas used to separate metabolites and immunoreactivity was assessed in all metabolites using a commercial testosterone radioimmunoassay, and parallelism, accuracy and pre