Treatment of ACTH-ectopic syndrome with long-acting octreotide: effective control of disease activity

Abstract

ACTH — ectopic syndrome (ACTH-ES) is a severe multisystem disease caused by paraneoplastic secretion of ACTH itself and/or much less often corticoliberin (CL) by tumor tissue. The frequency of ACTH-ES is 12–20% of cases of endogenous hypercortisolism, i.e. about 1–2 cases per million population, and covers a range of tumors, from benign neoplasms to malignant tumors with widespread metastases, while the most common causes of ACTH-ES are tumors of the lung, pancreas and thymus, and more rare localizations are neuroendocrine tumors (NET) of the intestine, medullary thyroid cancer, pheochromocytoma and mesothelioma. The optimal treatment for ACTH-ES is to remove the ACTH-secreting tumor. For patients with an unidentified source of ectopic hormone secretion, the choice is narrowed to bilateral adrenalectomy followed by hormone replacement therapy with glucocorticoids and mineralocorticoids. Medication options are generally a low-effective/palliative treatment option. In this article, we present a clinical case of the successful use of long-acting octreotide in a 36-year-old woman with severe ACTH-ES for long-term control of paraneoplastic ACTH secretion, against which a clinical and biochemical improvement comparable to complete remission of the disease was achieved.