PAPILLARY CYSTIC TUMOR OF THE PANCREAS - IS IT A HORMONE-DEPENDENT NEOPLASM

In order to attempt to examine the question of whether papillary cystic tumors (PCT) of the pancreas represent a hormone-dependent neoplasm or not, three cases of PCT were biochemically and immunohistochemically investigated. The patients included a 27-year-old man, a 14-year-old girl and a 21-year-old female. Two of the three patients showed measurable biochemical levels of progesterone receptor in the tumors by the dextran-coated charcoal (DCC) method, and an immunohistochemical study revealed that the nuclei of the tumor cells in all the three cases were diffusely positive for progesterone receptor. In the literature, there have been more than 300 female patients of PCT with a significant minority of only twenty male patients, and the mean age of the cases with PCT in men (31.4 years old) is higher than that in women (25.5 years old) (P < 0.05). These results therefore suggest that PCT is a sex hormone-dependent neoplasm.