Abstract
This paper reports the concenrations of urinary estrogen fractions excreted by 29 male patients with lung cancer including 12 cases of adenocarcinoma, 9 of squamous cell carcinoma 8 of anaplastic carcinoma.
Patients with lung cancer of the squamous type, excrete significantly more estrogen than healthy subjects. There were, however, no significant differences from the patients with adenocarcinoma, anaplastic carcinoma and healthy subjects.
Estrogen/17ks ratio is significantly higher in patients with lung cancer of the squamous type than patients with adenocarcinoma, the laters are presumed to excrete relatively less estrogen in urine.
Estradiol/estrone+estriol ratio is, however, higher in patients with adenocarcinoma than other histologic types of the lung cancer and healthy subject.
In patients with lung cancer and gynecomastia, the estrogen excretion is not always high, but the estradiol/estrone+estriol ratio is elevated in most of the cases.
The shift of estrogen fractions in the male patients with adenocarcinoma of the lung is related with the clinical fact that the incidence of gynecomastia is relatively high in the patient with adenocarcinoma of the lung. But, from this finding, the cause of the fact that the incidence of adenocarcinoma of the lung is higher in female than male is unknown.
