Host‐tumor Antagonism. Xix. Cancer and Dysfunction of the Liver*

Abstract

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMMany authorities have adduced evidence for the possibility of liver dysfunction in patients with cancer, and in experimental animals with transplanted cancer. Thus it has been known for a long time that the presence of a cancer anywhere in the body puts a strain on the liver.Recently, a book was published by the English surgeon, Kaspar Blond (I), whose central theme is that cancer is caused by certain toxins in the blood stream (and therefore also in certain organs), which are present only because they cannot be detoxified by a damaged liver. If the liver were not damaged, the toxins would be destroyed and no cancer would result. On this basis the prevention and treatment of cancer would be simple, a t least theoretically, even if it did not prove to be so simple in actuality. This theoretical concept seems of such importance, however, that it was thought worth while to examine again the basis for the reports of liver dysfunction in cancer patients and in cancer-bearing animals. EVIDENCE FOR LIVER DYSFUNCTION IN EXPERIMENTAL ANIMALS WITH TRANSPLAXTED TUMORSGreenstein (2), in normal and caiicerous animals, investigated under the same conditions a number of chemical and enzymatic systems in tissues which were located a t a distance from the tumor. None of these animals had metastases and they were in a good nutritional state. Greenstein was surprised to find that nearly all enzyme systems in the tissues studied were a t nearly the same level in normal and in cancer-bearing animals. There was only one enzyme system, catalase, and only in the liver, which was markedly affected by the presence of a cancer elsewhere in the body. Some suggestion of this phenomenon had already been reported years earlier by Brahn (3).Catalase is a hematoporphyrin enzyme that acts on hydrogen peroxide and decomposes it to water and oxygen. When liver homogenates, prepared under identical conditions from normal and cancer-bearing animals were compared, the rate of evolution of oxygen from added hydrogen peroxide was always less in cancer-bearing animals. There always was less catalase activity per unit of nitrogen of tissue in the livers of cancer-bearing animals. Other enzyme systems such as cytochrome C, cytochrome oxidase, or acid and alkaline phosphatase, were always a t normal levels in the same livers of cancer-bearing animals which simultaneously showed the marked decrease in catalase levels (2).