Association of endocrine neoplasia with multiple polyposis of the colon

Endocrine neoplasms have occasionally been noted in patients with Gardner's syndrome and other polyposis coli (PC) syndromes; 15 such cases were found in a survey of the English literature. This article reports four additional patients with PC in whom occult endocrine neoplasms were found at autopsy. Four sets of 100 consecutive autopsy reports, each bracketing but excluding one of the above cases, were reviewed. The incidence of endocrine neoplasia in patients with non-PC-colorectal cancer (2/18) was similar to that in the entire sample (32/400), while four of five PC patients had such tumors. These data suggest that endocrine neoplasia is significantly more frequent in PC than in other cancer patients, and a more frequent part of the PC syndromes than generally recognized. The relevance of these data to the issue of the genetics of the PC syndromes is discussed.