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In the halcyon days when life was simple, many thought that pituitary hormones were under the control of single hypothalamic factors which regulated their synthesis and release. Matters became a little more complex when the search for growth hormone (GH)-releasing hormone was punctuated by the discoveries of somatostatin, which inhibited both GH and thyrotrophin (TSH), by the co-release of TSH and prolactin by thyrotrophin-releasing hormone, and then by the substantiation of other prolactin-releasing factors such as vasoactive intestinal peptide. It has since become increasingly clear that pituitary peptides are regulated by a whole series of hypothalamic factors, both stimulatory and inhibitory, and are also subject to intrapituitary paracrine modulation.

There has, however, been slow acceptance of the concept that the release of adrenocorticotrophin (ACTH) too may be finely tuned by an inhibitory factor. There is clearly a predominant role for a stimulatory factor to ACTH release, the earliest candidate for