Subject(s)
Myasthenia Gravis/drug therapy , Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell/therapeutic use , Adolescent , Adult , Child , Child, Preschool , Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay , HLA-DR3 Antigen/immunology , Humans , Immunoglobulin G/metabolism , Infant , Myasthenia Gravis/blood , Myasthenia Gravis/immunology , Peptides/therapeutic use , Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell/classification , Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell/immunology , Thymus Hyperplasia/blood , Thymus Hyperplasia/complications , Thymus Hyperplasia/therapyABSTRACT
The authors report on a series of 255 thymomas and the associated diseases most often auto-immune, myasthenia is the disease most frequently encountered (61% of cases). Next, but with a much reduced frequency of around 2%, come other diseases such as hypogammaglobulinaemia, erythroblastopenic anaemia, and disseminated lupus erythematosis. The authors analyse the effect of ablating the thymoma on the associated disease; those with myasthenia are the principal beneficiaries of thymic ablation, 83% in this series experiencing a good response. Besides myasthenia only erythroblastopenic anaemia obtained some benefit from thymic ablation; in all the other cases surgery to the thymic tumour had no benefit on the associated disease. In the light of their own experience the authors made a review of the literature of the different diseases associated with thymomas and made the point of the efficacy of thymectomy in the different diseases.