Abstract
Introduction. Multihormonality is an ability of pituitary cells to produce more than one hormone. A great number of adenomas are multihormonal in the actual practice. We hypothesize cells of a normal pituitary gland to secret several hormones simultaneously. Objective. To investigate the co-expression of hormones by cells of the normal anterior pituitary of adult humans in autopsy material Materials and methods. We studied 10 normal pituitary glands from 4 females and 6 males. Double staining immunohistochemistry using 11 hormone combinations was performed in all the cases. Laser Confocal Scanning Microscopy with a mixture of primary antibodies was performed in 2 cases. Results. We found out same cells of the normal adult human anterior pituitary to be able to co-express PRL with ACTH, TSH, FSH, LH; GH with ACTH, TSH, FSH, LH, and TSH with ACTH, FSH, LH. The comparison of average coefficients of the co-expression of PRL, GH and TSH with other hormones showed the TSH co-expression coefficient to be significantly lower (9,5±6,9%; 9,6±7,8% and 1,0±1,3% correspondingly). Conclusion. Multihormonality of normal anterior pituitary is an actually existing phenomenon. Identification of different hormones in tissue samplesenables to optimize diagnosis and treatment of neuroendocrine tumours.
Authors and affiliations
Mitrofanova L.B., Konovalov P.V., Krylova Yu. S., Polyakova V.O., Kvetnoy I.M.
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