Primary intrapulmonary thymomas (PIT), which are intrapulmonary tumours without an associated mediastinal component, are very rare; only 29 cases of PIT have been described in the literature since 1951. This report presents a case of PIT in a 59-year old Chinese woman with a type A thymoma (including its pathogenesis, clinical pathological characteristics, immunological phenotype, treatment and prognosis), in the context of a review of the current literature. The origin of thymomas in this unusual location remains unknown. In this case, immunohistochemical analysis demonstrated that the epithelial component was strongly positive for cytokeratin and focally reactive for epithelial membrane antigen. It is concluded that PIT should be considered when the histopathological appearance of a lung tumour is not typical of other pulmonary neoplasms. Complete resection appears sufficient in non-malignant tumours, while in cases of partial resection or malignancy, adjuvant radiotherapy should be considered. Long-term regular clinical follow-up is also warranted, due to the risk of late local recurrence.

This study investigated selenoprotein P expression, using immunohistochemistry, in gastric adenocarcinoma tissue microarrays constructed from 30 gastric adenocarcinoma specimens and 30 normal gastric tissues (controls). Selenoprotein P expression scores were significantly lower in gastric adenocarcinoma (17/30, 56.7%) than in control tissues (25/30, 83.3%). Selenoprotein P was significantly more likely to be expressed in well-tomoderately differentiated cases (13/17, 76.5%) than in cases with low differentiation (4/13, 30.8%) and there was no significant difference in selenoprotein P expression between tumour node metastasis (TNM) stage I -II (11/19, 57.9%) and TNM stage III (6/11, 54.5%). In conclusion, selenoprotein P expression was low in gastric adenocarcinoma tissues compared with control tissues and was related to the degree of gastric adenocarcinoma differentiation but not to TNM stage.