Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Dermatol. Nov 2, 2016; 5(4): 136-143
Published online Nov 2, 2016. doi: 10.5314/wjd.v5.i4.136
Papular mycosis fungoides: Six new cases and association with chronic lymphocytic leukemia
Eric C Vonderheid, Marshall E Kadin, Gladys H Telang
Eric C Vonderheid, Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes, Tucson, AZ 85729, United States
Marshall E Kadin, Department of Dermatology, Boston University and Roger Williams Medical Center, Providence, RI 02908, United States
Gladys H Telang, Department of Dermatology, the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI 02903, United States
Author contributions: Vonderheid EC and Kadin ME designed the report; Telang GH performed the histologic and immunopathologic studies; Vonderheid EC collected the patients’ clinical data; Vonderheid EC, Kadin ME and Telang GH analyzed the data and wrote the paper.
Institutional review board statement: The study was approved by the Johns Hopkins Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent statement: Information about patients was obtained from an approved Cutaneous Lymphoma Registry and informed consent for clinical photography was obtained from all patients.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Eric C Vonderheid, MD, Adjunct Professor of Oncology, Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes, 37580 S. Desert Sun Drive, Tucson, AZ 85729, United States. evonder1@jhmi.edu
Telephone: +1-520-8252699
Received: June 7, 2016
Peer-review started: June 13, 2016
First decision: July 11, 2016
Revised: August 25, 2016
Accepted: October 1, 2016
Article in press: October 9, 2016
Published online: November 2, 2016
Processing time: 146 Days and 16 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Mycosis fungoides presenting with papules as the only clinical manifestation is a rare variant of the disease. To date only 16 cases of papular mycosis fungoides have been described in the literature and none had CD30+ cells. We report 6 additional cases, 5 with 1%-20% CD30+ cells. Three cases had co-existing clonal B cell lymphoproliferation (2 with chronic lymphocytic leukemia). The possible pathogenic relationship between mycosis fungoides and chronic lymphocytic leukemia is discussed.