The cellular derivation of benign neoplasms usually ascribed to the sweat glands has been controversial. The eccrine spiradenoma, described by Kersting and Helwig,1 has provoked much discussion due to its unusual symptomatology and its distinctive microscopic characteristics. Of the patients studied by these authors, 91% manifested pain, either developing spontaneously or produced by pressure on the lesion. The opportunity of observing the effects of pharmacologic agents on known eccrine spiradenomas, as well as of doing histochemical and electron microscopic studies on fresh tissue from known lesions, has been hopefully anticipated. These tumors, however, are almost always single, and solitary lesions are usually removed completely during biopsy, precluding such studies as those suggested.
In 1957 Stegmaier and Kersting2 described a woman with 4 distinct eccrine spiradenomas in the antecubital fossa. Upon the injection of 0.01 unit of oxytocin, such pain was produced that the patient would not allow further