In the fourth edition of the World Health Organization classification of endocrine tumors, are two critical changes to the classification for pituitary neuroendocrine tumors.

One is that the term “atypical adenoma,” which was characterized based on highly proliferative properties to predict adenomas that carry a poor prognosis, was completely eliminated due to the lack of definitive evidence. The other change is the introduction of more precise cell lineage-based classification of pituitary neuroendocrine tumor that is defined based on lineage-specific transcription factors and hormones produced. Accordingly, null cell adenomas have been re-defined as those that show completely negative immunostaining either for hormones or for adenohypophyseal transcription factors ¹⁾.