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Stress, Hormone Responses, and Cancer

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Cancer, Stress, and Death

Abstract

A wide variety of hormones are highly responsive to stressful stimulation. As we all know, the hallmark of stress is adrenal activation as first demonstrated by Selye for the adrenal cortex and by Cannon for the adrenal medulla (Mason, 1968). It is now known that release of corticosteroids from the adrenal gland is triggered by ACTH release from the anterior pituitary, which is in turn provoked by the release of corticotropin-releasing factor from the hypothalamus (James and Landon, 1968; Oken, 1967; Mason, 1968). The development of sensitive assay systems has led to the ability to measure all the anterior pituitary hormones in blood in man. It has now been shown that the patterns of release of many of these hormones are altered by stressful stimulation. In another series of exciting developments, the hypothalamic factors controlling several of the anterior pituitary hormones have been isolated, characterized, and synthesized (Martin et al., 1977).

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© 1986 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Brown, G.M., Seggie, J., Ettigi, P. (1986). Stress, Hormone Responses, and Cancer. In: Day, S.B. (eds) Cancer, Stress, and Death. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9573-8_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9573-8_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-9575-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-9573-8

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