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Nuffield Institute for Medical Research, University of Oxford, Headley Way, Headington, Oxford, 0X3 9DS

(Received 14 September 1976)

It is now well established that corticosteroids can act as negative feedback regulators of adrenocorticotrophin (ACTH) secretion (Yates & Maran, 1974), although unbound steroid is probably much more effective than protein-bound steroid in depressing ACTH secretion (Kawai & Yates, 1966). There are very high plasma corticosteroid concentrations in the foetal sheep during late pregnancy (Bassett & Thorburn, 1969) and although much of this is protein-bound the free corticosteroid concentration is also high (Fairclough & Liggins, 1975). Despite this the plasma ACTH concentration in the foetal sheep at this time is not depressed but may be raised (Rees, Jack, Thomas & Nathanielsz, 1975; Jones, Boddy & Robinson, 1977a). This suggests that the corticosteroids may not act as negative feedback regulators of ACTH secretion in the foetal sheep and the present experiments investigate this