| Research Abstract |
To examine whether neoplasms may produce symptoms by elaboration of rtrial natriuretic factor (ANF), we measured immunoreactive ANF concentrations in extracts of 55 lung carcinoma tissues (epidermoid carcinoma 17, adenocarcinoma 19, small cell carcinama 16, and large cell carcinoma 3) obrained at surgery or at autopsy. The mean <plus-minus>SD) ANF concentration in normal lung tissues from 4 of these patients was 5.6 <plus-minus> 2.5 ng/g wet tissue. Immunoreactive ANF levels in most tumor tissues were of similar order to those in normal lung tissues. In tumor tissues from 2 patients with small cell carcinoma associated with hyponatremia, however, ABF levels were significantly elevated, being 928 ng/g and 76.2 ng/g respectively. High performance liquid chromatography of tumor tissue ANF, with the radioimmunoassy of the eluted fractions for ANF resolved one major peak in the region of synthetic human ANF(99-126), while multiple forms of ANF were observed in human atrial tissue extract. In addition to ANF, a substantial amount of immunoreactive arginine vasopressin (AVP) was detected in both tumor tissues suggesting the concomitant production of ANP and AVP. These results indicate that ANF may be produced in some small cell carcinomas of the lung and may modify clinical features of such patieシテイタ
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