Association of HLA-A in autoimmune myasthenia gravis with thymoma.

We investigated an association of the HLA-A locus in 78 French Caucasian patients with autoimmune myasthenia gravis (MG) and thymic epithelial tumours. The largest effect was a protection associated with HLA-A02 in MG patients with a B2 type thymoma (OR=0.323, 95% CI: 0.

Lymph node pathology in pulmonary veno-occlusive disease and pulmonary capillary heamangiomatosis.

To assess the histological bases of lymphadenomegaly, which has been reported as a frequent radiological finding in pulmonary veno-occlusive disease (PVOD), we have reviewed pulmonary and mediastinal lymph nodes resected during lung transplantations in 19 patients suffering from PVOD and related pulmonary capillary haemangiomatosis (PCH). Lymphatic congestion was common and was often obvious in subsegmental and segmental lymph nodes. Vascular transformation of the sinuses, intra-sinusal haemorrhage with erythrophagocytosis and lymphoid follicular hyperplasia were frequent especially in lobar, hilar and mediastinal lymph nodes.

[Invasion of the pulmonary artery by an undifferentiated carcinoma].

Introduction: The diagnosis of chronic obstruction of the pulmonary artery is difficult. We present the case of a woman with an invasive, undifferentiated carcinoma of the pulmonary artery.

Case Report: A 61 year old woman complained of increasing dyspnoea.

Cysts of the posterior mediastinum showing müllerian differentiation (Hattori's cysts).

Cysts of probable müllerian origin have recently been recognized in the mediastinum by Hattori (Virchows Arch. 2005;446:82-84; Chest. 2005;128:3388-3390).

[Pulmonary fibrosis in Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome is not fully usual].

A 55-year-old female patient with Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome (albinism, thrombopathia and ceroid accumulation) underwent a single lung transplantation for pulmonary fibrosis. Examination of explanted lung showed usual interstitial pneumonia pattern associated with two unusual lesions: presence of numerous macrophages containing ceroid pigments within fibrosis and characteristic foamy swelling of pneumocytes. This later lesion, which has only been recently described, seems related to the mechanism of the disease by defect of surfactant secretion.