These include prednisolone or cortisone acetate. This is covered in detail in another Pituitary Foundation leaflet, entitled ' Diabetes Insipidus '. In women, lack of gonadotrophins usually causes disturbance to the menstrual cycle or even complete loss of periods. You may find you also lose interest in sex. In men, impotence and loss of sexual drive may be experience.
Infertility can be involve in both sexes.
You may also feel generally under the weather. As with most of the hormone deficiencies, you will be given one or more blood tests. These will indicate whether your sex hormone levels are below normal. Because a lack of gonadotrophins prevents your ovaries or testes from producing the correct sex hormones, treatment is usually with these hormones, for women, this usually means taking a variety of tablets which contain variable amounts of oestrogens and progestogens, which are the main hormones produced by the ovaries. Occasionally, instead of tablets, doctors prescribe other forms of treatment such as skin patches, as a few patients find they get on better with these than with tablets.