Systemic p-ANCA vasculitis with fatal outcome, arising in the setting of methimazole use.

Here we report a fatal case of antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis (AAV) due to methimazole use in a 64-year-old woman. She was initially hospitalized for abdominal pain and possible colitis, and subsequently developed hematuria, renal failure, and hemoptysis. The serologic work-up revealed positive antinuclear antibody (ANA) and perinuclear-antineutrophilic cytoplasm antibodies (p-ANCA), with positive antimyeloperoxidase. Three weeks following admission, the patient was found to be pulseless, and expired. At autopsy, microscopic review included widespread transmural necrotizing vasculitis and crescentic glomerulonephritis in the kidney, and diffuse pulmonary alveolar hemorrhage; focal coronary artery intimal vasculitis and necrotizing pericarditis were also noted. Several drugs have been associated with the development of ANCA-positive diseases, including propylthiouracil, hydralazine, allopurinol, penicillamine, and levamisole in cocaine. Association of ANCA vasculitis with methimazole exposure is less known, and severe presentation with fatal outcome, as seen in our patient, is exceedingly rare. We reviewed clinical and histopathologic features of drug-induced ANCA vasculitis associated with methimazole to raise awareness of this potentially life-threatening complication associated with this agent.

Infiltrating ductal carcinoma of the breast associated with primary breast lymphoma.

We report on the development of an uncommon association of pathologic processes, where an invasive adenocarcinoma of the breast developed concomitantly with a primary lymphoma arising in the same breast. The patient, a 78 year old female, presented with two palpable breast lesions in her left breast and an additional lesion in the right breast. Core needle biopsies of the lesions revealed both ductal carcinoma and lymphoma existing adjacent to each other in the left breast and a second primary lymphoma in her right breast. The mammogram, which also defined the lesions, illustrated collision tumors of the left breast and a separate pathologic process in the right breast. Excision of the lesions confirmed the two independent lesions on the left side, one an infiltrating ductal carcinoma and the second a large B-cell lymphoma. Biopsy of the right breast also demonstrated existence of a large B-cell lymphoma. Left axillary biopsy using sentinel node technology indicated that there was no evidence of nodal metastasis. The question arose as to possible etiologic factors related to viral transfection at the DNA level, that could cause transformation within the ductal epithelium of the breast with similar transfection of the lymphocytes of an adjacent intramammary node, that led to the development of the simultaneous pathologic processes of ductal carcinoma and B-cell lymphoma, defined on biopsy.

Differential expression of WT1 and p53 in serous and endometrioid carcinomas of the endometrium.

Wilms' tumor antibody (WT1) has recently been reported to be reactive in most ovarian and peritoneal serous carcinomas, but few studies have looked at WT1 reactivity in endometrial carcinomas. p53, like WT1, is a tumor suppressor gene and in its mutated form is frequently present in endometrial serous carcinoma. Routine immunohistochemical staining for p53 and WT1 was performed in 70 endometrial carcinomas (39 endometrioid and 31 serous) of varying differentiation using tissue microarrays. Only 2 (7.5%) serous carcinomas and none of the endometrioid carcinomas (0%) were reactive for WT1. p53 immunoreactivity was found in 26 (83.9%) serous carcinomas and in 2 (5.1%) endometrioid carcinomas. We conclude that WT1 and p53 expression are not related and that WT1 expression in endometrial serous carcinoma differs from that of its extrauterine counterparts.