Histamine, mast cells and tumour cell proliferation in breast cancer: does preoperative cimetidine administration have an effect?
Author(s): Bowrey PF, King J, Magarey C, Schwartz P, Marr P, Bolton E, Morris DL Affiliation(s): UNSW Department of Surgery, The St George Hospital, Kogarah, Sydney NSW, Australia. Publication date & source: 2000-01, Br J Cancer., 82(1):167-70. Publication type: Clinical Trial; Randomized Controlled Trial Endogenous histamine has been shown to effect growth mechanisms in experimental mammary carcinomas via H2 membrane receptors (Cricco et al, 1994). Both H1 and H2 binding sites are present in human mammary glands but only 75% malignant carcinomas express H2 receptors (Lemos et al, 1995). The presence of mast cells around tumour tissue raises questions concerning the source of histamine in breast tumour tissue. While cimetidine, an H2 antagonist, has been shown to influence the presence of tumour infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) in colorectal cancer (Adams and Morris, 1994, 1997) that was not found to be the case in breast cancer (Ng et al, 1995). In recent studies tumour cell proliferati
