Abstract
To the Editor.— The recent report by Soble and Wolf (235:277, 1975) described a case of breast cancer associated with refractory anemia in a 47-year-old woman. Anemia disappeared following removal of the tumor. The authors assume that the most likely explanation of anemia in this patient was a functional depression of erythropoiesis caused by release of a toxic factor or factors that were the result of tumor necrosis and inflammation. In experiments carried out in our laboratory, we observed that cell extracts prepared from mouse leukemia and from mouse-mammary carcinoma hemolyzed homologous red blood cells (RBCs) in vitro.1A similar, destructive action of cell-free extracts prepared from human breast cancer on human RBCs was also observed.2It is entirely possible that some of the refractory anemias in cancer patients may be due to the destruction of RBCs by toxic factors or certain hemolytic enzymes released by the tumor.
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