Hormone producing tumors of the lung.

With the report of the production of ACTH by non-endocrine neoplastic tissue, Meador and associates set the stage for increasing clinical awareness of ectopic hormone production from a variety of neoplasms, bronchial adenomas and oat cell carcinoma of the lung in particular. The clinical syndromes are those expected from excess secretion of ACTH, ADH, parathyroid hormone, growth hormone, insulin and other substances. At times, however, the presence of ectopic hormone production is masked by other features of the patient’s illness or because the lung tumor produces more than one hormonal substance. Clinical appreciation of this entity coupled to the greater availability of immunoassays for measurement of hormones in blood and tumor extracts can be expected to increase the clinical pathologist’s recognition of these syn­ dromes. More thorough tabulation of the true incidence of ectopic hormone production from lung cancers and careful measurement of the spectrum of hormone production by such tumors should help to unravel some of the many questions concerning the pathogenesis of hormonal secretion from nonendocrine tissues. With their report in 1962 of the produc­ tion of ACTH by nonendocrine neoplastic tissue, Meador et al9 set the stage for an increasing clinical awareness of ectopic hor­ mone production and diverse endocrino­ logie and metabolic syndromes in patients with a variety of neoplasms. Hormonal secretion from pancreatic, renal, bladder, ovarian, prostatic, parotid, gastric, thymic and pulmonary tumors has been re­ ported.7’10 Secretion of more than one hor­ monal substance by a neoplasm has been found in select cases.6