Pigmented mucoepidermoid carcinoma, a case report and review of the literature on melanin-pigmented salivary gland tumors

Abstract

Keywords: m e l a n o cy t e ; m e l a n i n p i g m e n t ; mucoepidermoid carcinoma; salivary gland tumor.

Inhibition of myeloid cell leukemia‐1 by tolfenamic acid induces apoptosis in mucoepidermoid carcinoma

“…Its clinical behavior is highly variable and ranges from being slow‐growing to being locally aggressive and highly metastatic. Although there are many case reports related to MEC (Takeda and Kurose, 2006; Leong et al , 2007; Das and Kalyani, 2008; Tucci et al , 2009), the molecular risk factors for MEC have not yet been completely understood.…”

Primary and Secondary Malignant Melanoma, and Other Melanotic Tumor, of the Hepatobiliary Tract

“…Apart from malignant melanoma, other tumors may contain melanin, and part of them have been found to metastasize to the liver, giving rise to differential diagnostic problems in biopsies. They include pigmented squamous cell carcinoma (Jurado et al 1998), pigmented mucoepidermoid carcinoma (Takeda and Kurose 2006), heavily pigmented renal cell carcinoma (Rossi et al 2009), pigmented neuroendocrine tumors (Iihara et al 2002), primary clear cell sarcoma (Taminelli et al 2005), melanotic schwannoma (Janzer and Makek 1983), and meningeal melanocytoma (Wang et al 2007).…”

Non‐melanocytic mimics of melanocytic neoplasms

“…Melanotic carcinomas of various epithelial tissues have been reported and are listed in Table 3. 18,19,30,31,[34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42] Like cutaneous melanotic epithelial tumours, these carcinomas contain melanin, melanophages and var-iable numbers of melanocytes. In most instances it is not difficult to distinguish these from malignant melanoma.…”

“…It is important to differentiate these cases from primary or metastatic melanomas in the kidney. 32,33 It is interesting to note that rare cases of pleomorphic adenoma 34 and pigmented mucoepidermoid carcinoma 35 of the salivary glands have been reported in which HMB-45-positive cells were interspersed between the tumour cells. Although these cases did not pose any diagnostic challenge it is possible that, as in cutaneous epithelial tumours, there is colonization of the lesions by melanocytes, particularly as melanocytes have been described to be present in normal major and minor salivary glands.…”

“…The lower left inset shows melanocytic nests in high power and the right inset shows melanoma antigen recognized by T cells (MART-1) expression in these cells, ·40. Melanotic adenocarcinoma of the uterus 19 Pigmented renal clear cell carcinoma with melanocytic differentiation 30,31 Pigmented pleomorphic adenoma 34 Pigmented muco-epidermoid carcinoma 35 Pigmented ameloblastic fibrodentinoma 38 Pigmented intra-osseous odontogenic carcinoma 39 Pigmented adenomatoid odontogenic tumour 40 Pigmented calcifying odontogenic cyst 41 Pigmented odontogenic keratocyst 42 differentiate lymphoid infiltrates from melanocytic lesions, it is harder to make this distinction in black patients. This is elegantly illustrated in a 1980 case of a 39-year-old black woman with a history of recurrent, ulcerating, erythematous lesions that healed spontaneously and left pigmented scars ( Figure 11).…”