Thymic lymphoepitheliomalike carcinoma in children

PubMed, the Internet portal of biomedical and life sciences literature, indexed an interesting article, entitled “Thymic lymphoepitheliomalike carcinoma in children: clinicopathologic features and molecular analysis.” (J Pediatr Hematol Oncol. 2006 Dec;28(12):785-90). Authors are Hsueh C, Kuo TT, Tsang NM, et al., from the Department of Pathology, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and Chang Gung University, Chang Gung Children’s Hospital, Tao-Yuan, Taiwan. Thymic lymphoepitheliomalike carcinoma (LELC) in children is extremely rare. The authors report 2 such cases with molecular analysis of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and its encoded latent membrane protein-1 as well as a literature review. Both patients were male, presented with a huge anterior mediastinal mass. There were altogether 9 cases of thymic LELC in children. Their common clinical features include a male predominance, large tumor size, advanced clinical stage, and poor clinical outcome. All cases were associated with EBV and nearly half developed concurrent hypertrophic osteoarthropathy (HOA). To access the full abstract of the article, click here.