TUMOUR EXPERIMENT

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 230, 28 September 1934, Page 15

TUMOUR EXPERIMENT

MILK HORMONE.

EFFECT OX MALE MONKEY.

A notable tumour discovery, by which the recently found milk hormone, prolactin, was used without surgery to cause disappearance of a benign tumour in the breast of a male monkey has been reported in "The American Journal of Cancer" by three Johns Hopkins scientists.

Prolactin is a chemical secreted into the blood by the pituitary gland at the base of the brain. It is so potent in inducing breast milk that it makes even a tomcat give milk. Benign tumours are non-cancerous growths. Their study is hoped to offer more light on the cause and relief of cancer. Some medical men believe benign tumours may be fore-runners of cancer, while the majority doubt it.

Tho experiment points to hormone unbalance as a definite cause of the benign breast tumours, male and female.

"Both new diagnostic procedures and new modes of therapy arc suggested," says the report, made by Charles F. Gesscickter, M.D., Dean Lewis, M.D., former president of the American Medical Association, and Cary G. Hartman.

The non-malignant breast growths were produced in monkeys at Johns Hopkins by giving them a sex hormone, ocstrin. This is a female hormone, but it induced the tumorous growths even in male monkeys.

The fact that men's own glands also produce small amounts of the female hormone is cited to show that ocstrin upsets may account for f his type of tumour in the male human being. Assays or biological tests also .showed the presence of this hormone concentrated in excess in women with the benign breast troubles.

These oestrin observations strengthen the suspicion that hormone unbalance has something to do with benign breast tumours. They show, too, that it is not an occasional great excess of oestrin that causes the tumours, but "prolonged and uninterrupted stimulation by oestrin."

The milk hormone prolactin which paused disappearance of male breast tumours is now being tried on female breast tumours of similar benign character. . .