Pigmented epithelioid melanocytoma: report of a case with favourable outcome after a 4-year follow-up period.

Background: Pigmented epitheliod melanocytoma (PEM) is a uncommon melanocytoma with unique histopathological features and possibly with a favourable prognosis, because, although sentinel lymph-node metastases may occur, in the great majority of cases described up to now there is no spread beyond regional lymph-nodes. The nature of PEM, its biologic behaviour and its relationships to naevi and melanoma, however, remain to be clearly established, and several Authors suggest that further cases of PEM with long follow-up should be published, in order to better assess the biologic/prognostic characteristics of PEM.

Methods And Results: We report a new case of PEM, dealing with an oval, regularly marginated, darkly pigmented, asymptomatic nodule.

Unusual form of cutaneous infiltration by cancer.

Breast cancer is the most common visceral neoplasm which metastatizes in skin. Skin infiltration by breast cancer may appear as various types of neoplastic/inflammatory lesions, including plaques, pigskin-like areas, scirrhous morphea-like lesions, nodules, zosteriform lesions, and papulovescicles. An unusual form of cutaneous infiltration involving a mammary region bearing a post-mastectomy surgical skin scar is herein described: interestingly, such a cutaneous cancer involvement could not be included in the above classification, because it merely consisted of red-purple areas dealing with small telangiectasias, without any sign of inflammation.

The vast majority of lymphocytes infiltrating primary cutaneous melanoma express the CD27 costimulatory receptor: implications for melanoma progression.

Melanoma progression is favoured by prevalence, within the micro-environment of primary cutaneous melanoma, of suppressive forces, e.g. exerted by CD4(+) CD25(+) FOXP3(+) regulatory T lymphocytes, over anti-melanoma immunity, e.