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Various steroids were examined in order to study the relationship between the responsiveness to adrenalectomy and urinary steroid excretion of Japanese women with advanced breast cancer. Sixty-one adrenalectomized cases were followed for more than 1 yr after treatment and used in the study. There was a statistically significant difference in urinary 17-ketosteroids between the responsive and unresponsive cases and between the intermediate and unresponsive cases. The mean values and their standard deviations determined preoperatively in the responsive, intermediate and unresponsive cases were 5.86 ±1.36, 4.04 ±1.79 and 2.83 ±0.91 mg/24 hr, respectively. There was also a statistically significant difference between the responsive and unresponsive cases in the excretion of dehydroepiandrosterone, androsterone and etiocholanolone. Many patients with breast cancer had low excretion of ll-deoxy-17-ketosteroids, but the patients who excreted normal amounts of androgenic steroids responded to an ablative...

Sections of both primary tumour and regional lymph-nodes from 86 Japanese and 86 British cases of breast cancer were reviewed " blind " by two American pathologists. Sinus histiocytosis was present in more than half the Japanese cases but was rare in the British ones, and this difference persisted when axillary-node metastasis was taken into account. Breast cancer runs a less malignant course in Japan, and the presence of sinus histiocytosis could be tied up with an immune defence mechanism.

SummaryThe uptake of glycine-2-C14 into the proteins of a rat mammary fibroadenoma has been studied as a possible bio-assay procedure for detecting useful anti-tumor steroids and other substances for further studies in humans. A preliminary method has been evolved consisting in transplantation of the tumor to 140 ± 15 g female rats and after 35 days injecting the rats once daily for 14 days with the test compounds. On the last day of treatment the rats received one injection of glycine-2-C14. Twenty-four hours after the last injection of the test compound and the glycine-2-C14 injection, the tumors are removed, weighed and C14 specific activity of the tumor protein determined. The tumor was inhibited by testosterone propionate but more regularly and more intensely by equal weights of 2α-methyl-17β-hydroxy-5α-androstan-3-one, a steroid.

To elucidate the extra-adrenal action of ACTH on cortisol metabolism, the influence of ACTH on the biological half-life, apparent distribution volume and urinary metabolites of cortisol were studied in 15 patients with adrenal insufficiency (7 patients with Addison's disease and 8 adrenalectomized-oophorectomized patients). Plasma cortisol disappearance was studied after a 30-min intravenous administration of 1 mg of cortisol/kg of body weight. After several days, the same test was repeated with the intravenous infusion of 50 IU of ACTH over 6 hr. During ACTH infusion, the plasma free 17-OHCS level was lower at the 1st and 2nd hr after the beginning of cortisol infusion, the extrapolated C0 value was significantly lower and the apparent distribution volume of infused cortisol was larger than that obtained at the comparable time without ACTH administration. On the other hand, the half-life of 17-OHCS from plasma was prolonged during ACTH infusion. These data suggest that ACTH accelerates the trans...