Manipulation of the hypothalamo-pituitary gonadal axis in the juvenile rainbow trout : influence of pituitary transplantation and LHRH analogue treatment

The effect of implanting an extra pituitary containing large amounts of gonadotropic hormone (GtH), combined or not with a luteinizing hormone releasing-hormone analogue (LHRHa) treatment, on GtH levels and gonadal development was investigated in juvenile host fish. The extrapituitaries were collected from mature spermiating fish or from immature fish treated with testosterone. In recipient males and females circulating plasma GtH levels increased following transplantation of both types of pituitaries. Elevated GtH levels presumably triggered steroid synthesis by the immature male gonad since pituitary GtH content was observed to accumulate in recipient males and not in females. However, the potency of the two kinds of pituitaries seemed different since spermatogenesis was stimulated only in some recipient males bearing a mature adult pituitary. This divergence could be due to a different sensitivity to endogenous gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH). Only mature extrapituitaries might be highly sensitive to GnRH, as suggested by results obtained in juvenile host fish after LHRHa treatment. At the end of the 6-week experimental period, this LHRHa treatment stimulated spermatogenesis and induced a significant increase in pituitary GtH content only in juvenile hosts transplanted with a mature pituitary. Such a result was not observed in juvenile hosts submitted to a LHRHa treatment combined or not with the transplantation of juvenile testosterone-treated pituitary. However, previous works have shown that pituitaries collected from immature testosterone-treated fish are sensitive to GnRH. In the present experiment, the amount of GnRH-induced GtH release might have been too low to initiate spermatogenesis during the 6-week experimental period.