BREAST CHANGES DUE TO DIETHYLSTILBESTROL

Abstract

It has been demonstrated that benign lesions and cancer can be induced in animals by various estrogenic preparations. Lacassagne,¹ Gardner and his co-workers,² Burrows³ and others have shown that treatment of male mice with estrogens gives rise to a higher percentage of breast cancers than would occur normally and at an earlier age. Lacassagne in 1932 gave weekly injections of estrogens to 5 male mice belonging to a strain in which 72 per cent of females were subject to spontaneous breast cancer, the males not being subject to this development. He then found breast cancer in each of the 5 male mice. Lacassagne presented interval sections of several of these male mice during estrone treatment. The breast of an adult male mouse is shown in figure 1, from Lacassagne's study. The section shows the subcutaneous tissue with only two small ducts with flattened and empty lumen. The