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Samuel Vaisrub, MD

JAMA. 1975;234(11):1169.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Watery diarrhea with hypokalemia and achlorhydria (WDHA) often complicates the clinical course of nonbetacell adenomas of the pancreas and occasionally of other hormone-secreting tumors. This serious and frequently fatal complication is sometimes referred to as pancreatic cholera or Verner-Morrison syndrome.¹ Neither the eponymic nor the descriptive term, however, provides clues to the hormone or hormones responsible for the increased intestinal secretion of fluid and electrolytes and for other metabolic derangements—achlorhydria, hypercalcemia, hyperglycemia—associated with WDHA.

Barbezat and Grossman² suggested that gastrin and glucagon are the responsible hormones. Sanzenbacher and his associates³ sought to incriminate secretin or secretin-like substances. Elias et al⁴ reported a patient in whom gastrininhibitory-peptide appeared to be the culprit. None of these hypotheses, however, gained much credence.

More substantial is the evidence implicating VIP, the vasoactive intestinal polypeptide that was discovered and purified by Said and Mutt⁵ in 1970. This polypeptide, which is . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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