Malignant lymphoma of the breast in a male patient: ultrasound imaging features.

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) of the breast is a rare disease. Herein, we report a rare case of secondary involvement of the breast by NHL in a male patient and the ultrasound imaging findings. A 70-year-old man noticed an induration of the subareolar region of the right breast. He had been diagnosed as having mantle cell lymphoma 5 years before and treated with several series of chemoradiotherapy. On supine examination, palpation revealed bilateral breast enlargement, but detection of a lump was difficult. Ultrasonography showed a hypoechoic non-mass image-forming lesion in the subareolar region of the right breast. The final pathological diagnosis was recurrence of mantle cell lymphoma in the right breast. The diagnosis of malignant lymphoma of the breast by imaging modalities is difficult because there are no specific features. Breast lymphoma should be included with gynecomastia and breast cancer in the differential diagnosis of male patients with breast enlargement.

Isolation and characterization of a novel protein toxin from fire coral.

Fire corals (Millepora spp.) cause severe pain and inflammatory effects in humans upon contact, and the organs responsible for these effects are called nematocysts. Here, we isolated an active cytotoxin of ca. 18 kDa (MCTx-1) from nematocysts of Millepora dichotoma var. tenera. MCTx-1 was potently cytotoxic (EC50 value 79 ng/mL) towards L1210 mouse leukemia cells, hemagglutinated a 0.8% suspension of sheep erythrocytes (0.2 microg protein/mL) and was lethal in crayfish (LD50, 106 microg/kg). We deduced the primary structure of MCTx-1 from the corresponding cDNA sequence and found that MCTx-1 is a novel dermatopontin that is an extracellular matrix protein in mammals. This is the first characterization of a proteinaceous toxin from fire coral.