Morphological detection of androgen receptors in the human skin

Detection of anclrogen reeeptors in the skin, as well as in other organs, was previously performed using chromatographic and/or ultracentrifugal techniques. We propose an immunocytochemical technique, both in light microscopy (LM) and in electron microscopy (EM). Skin biopsy samples were obtained from the back of acneic and/or hirsute subjects. After endogenous peroxidase inhibition, specimens were incubated with anti-testosterone, anti-dihydrotestostcronc (DHT) or anti-androstendione sera. In a second step, specific peroxidase-conjugated antisera were used. Then, the immunological reaction was detected with 3-3'diaminobenzidine. The sections were finally processed for the standard LM or EM procedures. In LM of the sebaceous gland and hair follicle cells, numerous labelled nuclei with anti-DHT and anti-androstendione sera were found; on the contrary, only few nuclei were testosterone positive. By EM, only lipid vacuoles wcre labelled, with a different pattern for the three antisera. Control was always negative. The detection of androgen receptors in the nuclei and lipid vacuoles of sebaceous gland cells seems functionally important. On the other hand, the demonstration in LM of androgen receptors within the nuclei has not yet been confirmed in EM, presumably due to technical problems of the pre-embedding method. A post-embedding technique could be valuable to verify the present findings.