Development of the adrenal cortex, a vital endocrine organ, originates in the adrenogonadal primordium, a common progenitor for both the adrenocortical and gonadal lineages in rodents. In contrast, we find that in humans and cynomolgus monkeys, the adrenocortical lineage originates in a temporally and spatially distinct fashion from the gonadal lineage, arising earlier and more anteriorly within the coelomic epithelium. The adrenal primordium arises from adrenogenic coelomic epithelium via an epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, which then progresses into the steroidogenic fetal zone via both direct and indirect routes. Notably, we find that adrenocortical and gonadal lineages exhibit distinct HOX codes, suggesting distinct anterior-posterior regionalization. Together, our assessment of the early divergence of these lineages provides a molecular framework for understanding human adrenal and gonadal disorders.

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Prognostic risk factors were statistically analyzed from the histopathologic data obtained from 90 Japanese women with stages I and II endometrial carcinoma treated surgically, including systemic retroperitoneal lymph node dissection, between June 1979 and June 1989. In stage Ia endometrial carcinoma, pelvic and paraaortic nodes metastasis were seen in 13.8(4/29)% and 0.0(0/19)% of patients, respectively. In stage Ib, the incidence of pelvic and paraaortic node metastasis was 25.6(11/43)% and 9.7(3/31)%, respectively. In stage II, the incidence was 38.9(7/18)% and 13.3(2/15)%, respectively. Prognosis of patients even with deep myometrial invasion (>=2/3) or G3 tumor was fairly good (5‐year survival rate: 87.5% and 85.7%, respectively) if the disease was histologically confined to the uterine corpus. Once the tumor spread outside the corpus uteri, the survival rate of patients was strongly affected by the grade of the tumor, moderate to marked lymph‐vascular space invasion of tumor cells, or tumor invading middle or outer third of myometrium (P<0.05 for each factor). In summary, endometrial cancer frequently metastasize to pelvic and paraaortic lymph nodes even in the early stages, and lymph node metastasis and other extracorporeal spread of disease have a serious impact on patient survival. Prognosis of patients with extra‐corporeal spread of disease seems to be determined by the high grade of tumor and lymph‐vascular space invasion. These results suggest that surgical exploration including paraaortic lymph node dissection to accurately evaluate the extent of the disease is essential to estimate the patient's prognostic risk and to individualize the treatment schedule.

The transference of the AFP-L3 fraction might be relatively high in the placentas of women carrying a trisomy 21 fetus, and this could be the one of the reasons for the increase in the percentage of AFP-L3 in the maternal serum in pregnancies with a trisomy 21 fetus.