PHEOCHROMOCYTOMA WITH DIABETES*
1947; Oxford University Press; Volume: 7; Issue: 10 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1210/jcem-7-10-716
ISSN1945-7197
Autores Tópico(s)Cancer, Hypoxia, and Metabolism
ResumoHYPERTENSION and glycosuria are conditions which in the vast majority of cases are not accessible to causal therapy. Yet there is a small—but important—group of patients with high blood pressure, paroxysmal or persistent, and with glycosuria, transitory or even permanent, who can find curative treatment, if the correct diagnosis of their disease is made in time. These are the patients with pheochromocytoma. The pheochromocytoma is an endocrine tumor of adrenal medullary tissue and produces epinephrine. Its active cells are chromaffin and give a brownish stain when exposed to a solution of potassium bichromate; it is from this reaction, that the name pheochromocytoma (brown cell tumor) was derived. The adrenal medulla originates from the sympathetic nerve system and the pheochromocyte is one of the final developmental forms of the sympathogonia, the stem cell of the sympathetic nerve system. It is therefore easily understandable that only those tumors of the adrenal medulla are hormone-producing in which the differentiation of the stem cells has progressed to the stage of the pheochromocyte. On the other hand, pheochromocytoma may develop outside of the adrenal medulla wherever sympathetic nerve cells are present, as for instance in the sympathetic glands along the aorta and the carotid body. Table 1 shows the pheochromocytoma in its relation to the other non-endocrine tumors of the sympathetic nerve system.
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