Role of prolactin in benign prostatic hypertrophy

Abstract Plasma prolactin levels were measured in 22 adult men less than age forty five and 31 men more than age fifty by means of a double radioimmunoassay technique. No rise in plasma prolactin to correlate with the period of benign prostatic growth was noted; in fact there was a statistically significant decline of prolactin with increasing age. When the older patients were subdivided, patients with larger prostates had prolactin levels similar to those of patients with smaller prostates. While these experiments do not rule out a permissive role for prolactin in benign prostatic hypertrophy, they do indicate that increased prolactin secretion is not an initiating stimulus for its development.