A Preliminary Report on the Pathology of the Pituitary Gland in Children with Malnutrition

There have been a number of reports on the general pathology of malnutrition, especially kwashiorkor, which have included careful studies of the exocrine glands (Davies, 1948; Jelliffe, Bras and Stuart, 1954; Tejada, 1955).However, little is known of the pathology of the endocrine glands in this condition.Clinical studies of malnourished adults show that they may have pigmentation of the skin, lowered metabolic rates, gynecomastia, asthenia and sexual disturbances (Jacobs, 1948; Klatskin, Salter and Humm, 1947; Zubirain and Gomez-Mont, 1953; Zubiran, Gomez-Mont and Laguna, 1955).Furthermore, there may be severe depletion of protein enzymes (Scrimshaw, Behar, Perez and Viteri, 1955; Vehelyi, 1948).Because of these facts, some authors have postulated that pituitary hypofunction comparable to 'panhypo- pituitarism' is characteristic of extreme malnutrition (Gonzalez Valero, Garcia Reyes and Gomez-Mont, 1950; Paullada, 1955; Zubirain and Gomez-Mont, 1953; Zubirain et al., 1955).Pathological studies of the pituitary itself, however, are rare, and consist of observations on adults suffering from general malnutrition (Paullada, 1955, Zubiran and Gomez- Mont, 1953) or anorexia nervosa (Richardson, 1939;Siebenmann, 1955;Wilson, 1954).The purpose of this paper is to report the pathological anatomy of the pituitary in children with malnutrition.