Copyright
©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Oncol. Dec 15, 2025; 17(12): 113198
Published online Dec 15, 2025. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v17.i12.113198
Published online Dec 15, 2025. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v17.i12.113198
Pancreatic neuroendocrine microtumors in the elderly: A retrospective study using cadaveric pancreatic tissue
Ting Yang, Shuang-Qin Yi, Department of Frontier Health Sciences, Graduate School of Human Health Sciences, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Tokyo 116-8551, Japan
Ke Ren, Xiang-Quan Chen, Faculty of Physical Education, Qujing Normal University, Qujing 655000, Yunnan Province, China
Taku Toriumi, Department of 1st Anatomy, Nippon Dental University School of Life Dentistry at Niigata, Niigata 951-8037, Japan
Yutaro Natsuyama, Department of Anatomy, Tokyo Medical University, Tokyo 160-0022, Japan
Jun Li, State Key Laboratory of Oncogenes and Related Genes, Shanghai Cancer Institute, Ren Ji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Aoi Sukeda, Toshitaka Nagao, Department of Anatomic Pathology, Tokyo Medical University Hospital, Tokyo 160-0023, Japan
Co-first authors: Ting Yang and Ke Ren.
Author contributions: Yi SQ, Yang T, and Ren K designed and conceived the study; Ren K and Yi SQ acquired funding for the study; Toriumi T provided valuable specimens for this study; Yang T and Ren K participated in the experiments; Yang T, Yi SQ, Ren K, Chen XQ, Natsuyama Y, Li J, Sukeda A, and Nagao T analyzed the data; Yang T wrote the article; Yi SQ revised the manuscript accordingly; all authors have contributed to the final version of the manuscript and have read and approved the final manuscript. Yang T and Ren K contributed equally to this work as co-first authors.
Supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan, No. 25K10147.
Institutional review board statement: All procedures were approved by the study security Ethics Committees of Tokyo Metropolitan University (No. 18051), Nippon Dental University in Tokyo (NDU-T-2016-29), and Niigata (No. 23823).
Informed consent statement: This study was performed in accordance with the institutional guidelines.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest in association with the present study.
Data sharing statement: This study contains all data that support these findings. The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Shuang-Qin Yi, MD, PhD, Professor, Department of Frontier Health Sciences, Graduate School of Human Health Sciences, Tokyo Metropolitan University, 7-2-10, Higashiogu, Arakawa-Ku, Tokyo 116-8551, Japan. yittmniu@tmu.ac.jp
Received: August 20, 2025
Revised: September 18, 2025
Accepted: October 30, 2025
Published online: December 15, 2025
Processing time: 114 Days and 7.3 Hours
Revised: September 18, 2025
Accepted: October 30, 2025
Published online: December 15, 2025
Processing time: 114 Days and 7.3 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: This cadaveric study identified pancreatic neuroendocrine microtumors (PNEMTs) in 5.9% of predominantly elderly individuals (mean age: 88.0 ± 9.3 years) that were small (≤ 2.20 mm), secreted glucagon, had minimal proliferative activity (Ki-67 near negative), and had well-differentiated grade 1 lesions. These findings emphasize that biologically indolent PNEMTs are significantly more prevalent in the aged population than are clinically recognized. Given that tumor enlargement may be associated with malignant potential, early detection is of critical clinical importance for managing incidental lesions.