Abstract
A 56-year-old female patient was admitted to our hospital because of fever, shortness of breath and edema of lower extremities. Physical examination revealed diminished breath sounds over the right lung field, marked hepatosplenomegaly and inguinal lymphadenopathy. A roentgenogram of the chest disclosed a large tumor shadow in the right lung field. The white blood cell count was 64,400/mm3 with 90% mature neutrophilic granulocytes and bone marrow aspiration from the sternum demonstrated myeloid hyperplasia. The histological diagnosis of the tumor on thoracotomy was squamous cell carcinoma of the lung. Colony stimulating factors (CSF) and stimulating activity for colony stimulating factor (CSF-SA) were investigated using normal human bone marrow cells as the target cells. The serum from the patient had no CSF activity but CSF-SA. High CSF were, however, demonstrated in the tumor extract and the medium conditioned with the tumor tissue. The concentration of CFU-C in the bone marrow cells from the patient was also increased. Moreover, nude mice which were transplanted with the tumor tissue showed a marked neutrophilic granulocytosis. From these findings, it could be considered that the tumor tissue produced CSF or CSF-SA functioning in vivo.
