On the distribution of urine output in normally cycling women

SummaryIt has been suggested that it is possible to monitor the menstrual cycle by measuring the concentration of urinary reproductive steroids. This neglects the variation in void volume and in urine production rate. In neither case has any systematic analysis been reported previously. Overnight urine samples were collected each day for one complete cycle by 24 women and the void volumes and intervoid times were recorded. The void volume and urine production rate were approximately lognormally distributed and the intervoid time was approximately normally distributed. Using these distributions we consider the implications of the variation in void volume and urine production rate for the comparison of the concentrations of a urinary analyte in two samples.

Is there a role for reproductive steroids in the etiology and treatment of affective disorders?

A variety of hormones have been shown to play a role in affective disorders. Reproductive steroids are particularly informative in our efforts to understand the pathophysiology of affective dysregulation for several reasons: i) Reproductive endocrine-related mood disorders (premenstrual dysphoric disorder, perinatal depression, perimenopausal depression) are wonderful clinical models for investigating the mechanisms by which affective state changes occur; ii) Reproductive steroids regulate virtually every system that has been implicated as disturbed in the ontogeny of affective disorders; iii) Despite the absence of a reproductive endocrinopathy a triggering role in the affective disturbance of reproductive mood disorders has been shown clearly for changes in reproductive steroids. The existing data, therefore, support a differential sensitivity to reproductive steroids in reproductive mood disorders such that an abnormal affective state is precipitated by normal changes in reproductive steroids. The therapeutic implications of these findings for affective illness are discussed.