Background: Evidence for vitamin B 12 deficiency usually involves combinations of low serum vitamin B 12 levels, clinical and metabolic abnormalities, and therapeutic response. Identification of the underlying cause is important in the diagnosis of vitamin B 12 deficiency that is usually attributed to malabsorption. Helicobacter pylori is one of the most common causes of peptic ulcer disease worldwide and a major cause of chronic superficial gastritis leading to atrophy of gastric glands. It is suggested that there may be a casual relationship between H pylori and food-cobalamin malabsorption.

Hyaline or amyloid-like substances may be seen in several oral lesions. Some of these originate from epithelial cells and some from connective tissue components. In this study, amyloid-like material causing gingival enlargement in three patients, with eyelid involvement in two, was examined using histochemistry, immunohistochemistry and electron microscopy. These accumulations did not share the classical features of amyloid such as green birefringence under polarized light after Congo red staining. Our findings suggest that epithelial degeneration plays an important role in the pathogenesis of these amyloid-like accumulations. These substances may be the result of defective amyloidogenesis and our cases may represent an oral counterpart of ligneous conjunctivitis or colloid milium of the skin.

A solitary fibrous tumour is a pleural tumour which may rarely be detected at non-pleural sites. In this report, the case of a solitary fibrous tumour arising from the sublingual salivary gland is described.

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A 44-year-old female presented with a painful mass in the left parotid gland. Histologic examination revealed the characteristic picture of oncocytic mucoepidermoid carcinoma (OMEC) composed mainly of sheets of oncocytic cells with uniform nuclei and eosinophilic cytoplasm, focally smaller epidermoid cells surrounding poorly formed glandular spaces, and a few cystic structures lined by well-differentiated mucous cells with intracytoplasmic mucin. Immunohistochemical staining with antimitochondrial antibody showed granular cytoplasmic positivity in oncocytic cells. The resulting histogram for DNA ploidy analysis was of diploid type. OMEC of the parotid gland is a recently described rare neoplasm. Only six cases have been previously reported in the literature. For an accurate approach in the management of patients, OMEC should be considered in the differential diagnosis of oncocytic lesions of the parotid gland, most of which are benign.