These may indicate that the disease has spread from the bone into the chest cavity. The breathing problems may be misdiagnosed as asthma, because the damage done to the lungs can cause the same types of changes to lung function testing as seen in asthma. Extension of the lesions into the chest may lead to the development of chylous pleural and pericardial effusions. Chyle is rich in protein and white blood cells that are important in fighting infection. The loss of chyle into the chest can have serious consequences, including infection, malnutrition, and respiratory distress and failure. These complications or their symptoms, such as difficulty breathing, chest pain, poor growth or weight loss, and infection have sometimes been the first indications of the condition. Causes
The specific cause of Gorhams disease remains unknown. Bone mass and strength are obtained and maintained through a process of bone destruction and replacement that occurs at the cellular level throughout a persons life. Cells called osteoclasts secrete enzymes that dissolve old bone, allowing another type of cells called osteoblasts to form new bone. Except in growing bone, the rate of breakdown equals the rate of building, thereby maintaining bone mass. In Gorhams disease, that process is disrupted.Gorham and Stout found that vascular anomalies always occupied space that normally would be filled with new bone and speculated that the presence of angiomatosis may lead to chemical changes in the bone.
Though several reports of similar cases were published in the interim, more than 80 years passed before another significant report of the condition appeared in the medical literature.Both born in 1885, Lemuel Whittington Gorham, MD, and Arthur Purdy Stout, MD, had long, distinguished careers in medicine and shared a lifelong interest in pathology. Dr. Gorham practiced and taught medicine and oncology and from the mid-1950s through the early 1960s conducted and reported the classical clinicopathological investigations of pulmonary embolism. During this time, he also authored several case series on osteolysis of bone. Dr. Stout began his career as a surgeon and became a pioneer in tumor pathology, publishing Human Cancer in 1932. This work became the model for the Atlas of Tumor Pathology project, which Stout oversaw as chairman of the National Research Council in the 1950s. In his later years, Dr. Stout embarked on a systematic study of soft tissue tumors in children and was among the first to link cigarette smoking to lung cancer.In 1954, Gorham and three others published a two case series, with a brief review of 16 similar cases from the medical literature, that advanced the hypothesis that angiomatosis was responsible for this unusual form of massive osteolysis. That same year, Gorham and Stout presented to the American Association of Physicians their paper (in abstract form), "Massive Osteolysis (Acute Spontaneous Absorption of Bone, Phantom Bone, Disappearing Bone): Its Relation to Hemangiomatosis".