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American Journal of Pathology, Vol 151, 769-784, Copyright © 1997 by American Society for Investigative Pathology

REGULAR ARTICLES

Overexpression of the growth-hormone-releasing hormone gene in acromegaly-associated pituitary tumors. An event associated with neoplastic progression and aggressive behavior

K Thapar, K Kovacs, L Stefaneanu, B Scheithauer, DW Killinger, RV Lioyd, HS Smyth, A Barr, MO Thorner, B Gaylinn and ER Laws Jr
Department of Neurosurgery, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The clinical behavior of growth hormone (GH)-producing pituitary tumors is known to vary greatly; however, the events underlying this variability remain poorly understood. Herein we demonstrate that tumor overexpression of the GH-releasing hormone (GHRH) gene is one prognostically informative event associated with the clinical aggressiveness of somatotroph pituitary tumors. Accumulation of GHRH mRNA transcripts was demonstrated in 91 of a consecutive series of 100 somatotroph tumors by in situ hybridization; these findings were corroborated by Northern analysis and reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction, and protein translation was confirmed by Western blotting. By comparison, transcript accumulation was absent or negligibly low in 30 normal pituitary glands. GHRH transcripts were found to preferentially accumulate among clinically aggressive tumors. Specifically, GHRH mRNA signal intensity was 1) linearly correlated with Ki-67 tumor growth fractions (r = 0.71; P < 0.001), 2) linearly correlated with preoperative serum GH levels (r = 0.56; p = 0.01), 3) higher among invasive tumors (P < 0.001), and 4) highest in those tumors in which post-operative remission was not achieved (P < 0.001). Using multivariate logistic regression, a model of postoperative remission likelihood was derived wherein remission was defined by the single criterion of suppressibility of GH levels to less than 2 ng/ml during an oral glucose tolerance test. In this outcome model, GHRH mRNA signal intensity proved to be the most important explanatory variable overall, eclipsing any and all conventional clinicopathological predictors as the single most significant predictor of postoperative remission; increases in GHRH mRNA signal were associated with marked declines in remission likelihood. The generalizability of this outcome model was further validated by the model's significant performance in predicting postoperative remission in a random sample of 30 somatotroph tumors treated at another institution. These data indicate that overexpression of GHRH gene is an event associated with the neoplastic progression and clinical aggressiveness of somatotroph adenomas. More generally, these data merge essential elements of the hypothalamic and pituitary hypotheses of pituitary tumorigenesis, providing for a more unified concept of neoplastic progression in the pituitary.

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