Intrapancreatic accessory spleen. A case report and review of literature.

CONTEXT: Accessory spleen is a congenital focus of healthy splenic tissue that is separated from the main body of spleen. Although an accessory spleen usually appears as an isolated asymptomatic abnormality, it may have clinical significance in some situations. CASE REPORT: We report the case of 53-year-old woman with a 2-year history of upper abdominal discomfort after meals and weight loss. The pathologic lesion was diagnosed by the abdominal sonography and the magnetic resonance tomography in the pancreatic tail. The patient was operated with suspicion of a solid pseudopapillary neoplasm or a nonfunctioning islet cell tumor. Histopathological examination found an intrapancreatic accessory spleen, which is a congenital abnormality consisting of normal splenic tissue in ectopic sites. CONCLUSION: We present possibilities of differential diagnosis of this entity.

Polymorphisms of the XRCC1 and XPD genes and breast cancer risk: a case-control study.

The purpose of this case control study was to evaluate the role of X-ray repair cross-complementing group 1 (XRCC1) and xeroderma pigmentosum group D (XPD) genotypes as genetic indicators of susceptibility to breast cancer (BC). We analysed DNA samples from 114 breast cancer patients and 113 control subjects using polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism. For the single nucleotide polymorphisms in XRCC1 exon 10 (Arg399Gln, G/A) and XPD exon 23 (Lys751Gln, A/C), no remarkable differences for genotype distribution and allele frequencies were observed between BC group and control group in the study. The genotype frequency for homozygote A/A in XPD exon 6 (Arg156Arg, C/A) were significantly different between BC and control groups (P < 0.0001, odds ratio = 2.14; 95% confidence interval 1.44-3.17). The data indicate a possible role for XPD (Arg156Arg, C/A) polymorphisms in BC susceptibility.