AB054. PS02.18: Thymic epithelial tumours and additional malignancies: an unresolved enigma

Abstract

Background: Recent literature data have confirmed a rate of about 17% of second malignancies in patients with thymoma. Most cases of second malignancies appear metachronously. Adenocarcinomas of the gastrointestinal tract and thyroid cancers are detected most frequently. A precise pathogenic mechanism linking thymoma to an increased incidence of cancer remains unclear, although the finding of multiple malignancies in the same patient including often a haematological neoplasm, has brought to assume a direct role of the T-lymphocytes stimulated by the thymoma epithelium in the genesis of other cancers. However, according to our knowledge, no association between the development of further neoplasms, the presence or not of parathymic immunological disorders and the histological subtypes has been found and, although cytogenetic abnormalities have been reported in thymoma, no molecular or cytogenetic mechanisms adequately explain the tendency of thymoma patients to acquire additional neoplasms.