Kimura's disease in a Caucasian male treated with cyclosporine

Current concepts of Kimura disease: pathophysiology and evolution of treatment

Kimura disease (KD) is a chronic inflammatory disorder that frequently involves the subcutaneous tissue of the head and neck regions. It often manifests as regional lymphadenopathy or salivary gland enlargement in the affected area. The histologic architecture of the lymph nodes in KD patients is preserved, while the affected tissues show follicular hyperplasia and eosinophilic infiltration. No single modality has been adopted as an optimal treatment for KD. This article concentrates on the fundamental features of KD and reviews current approaches to its treatment.

Kimura's disease mimicking thoracic spine dumbbell neurogenic tumor: a case report and literature review

Background

Kimura’s disease is a rare, benign chronic inflammatory disease of unknown etiology that mostly affects Asians. The disease typically presents as subcutaneous masses in the head or neck region that are predominantly found in the preauricular and submandibular areas.

Case presentation

A 7-year-old boy presenting with paralysis of both lower extremities and a thoracic spine dumbbell mass was initially diagnosed with a neurogenic tumor, but the pathological and laboratory examinations confirmed the diagnosis of Kimura’s disease. The paralysis symptom disappeared rapidly, but the patient had developed a recurrent mass in the cervical vertebral canal at the 9-month follow-up.

Conclusion

To our knowledge, no prior published literature has revealed Kimura’s disease cases that mimic dumbbell neurogenic tumors. Here, we report such a case of Kimura’s disease for the first time and provide a brief review of the literature.

Mepolizumab as an effective treatment for Kimura's disease associated with ulcerative colitis: A case report

Kimura's disease was first described by Kimura and Sceto in China in 1937. Kimura disease is a chronic inflammatory disorder of idiopathic etiology. The clinical presentation of Kimura's disease is painless solitary or multiple subcutaneous nodules, asymmetric, mostly in the head and neck region with often association with lymphadenopathy. Typically, the nodules are found on preauricular, submandibular, and popliteal regions as well as oral cavity, larynx, and parotid glands. In the present report, we describe a case of a 27-year-old male presented to our hospital with history of right neck and lip swelling for 10 days. In the history, the patient mentioned that he had bloody diarrhea four to six times day and he lost 10 kg in 1 month. The specimen was sent for histopathological examination which showed the lymph node architecture is preserved with significant increase number of eosinophils which is consistent with Kimura's disease. There is no agreement on the management aspects in Kimura's disease so far. The primary treatment for Kimura's disease includes surgical resection. Additional medical therapy including regional or systemic steroid therapy, cytotoxic therapy, and radiation has also been utilized. Considered as an inflammatory process, the disease has an excellent prognosis, although it may recur locally and wax and wane over time.

Kimura disease: review of the literature

Kimura disease (KD) is a rare, chronic inflammatory disease of unknown cause and is characterized by painless s.c. swellings and lymphadenopathy commonly affecting the head and neck region. Much therapeutics has been used to treat KD, but is not satisfactory because of frequent relapse. Imatinib has been reported previously to be useful for treatment of hypereosinophilic syndrome and may work by selectively blocking protein-tyrosine kinases, such as platelet-derived growth factor receptor, and c-Kit. We carried out immunohistochemical examination of platelet-derived growth factor receptor-alpha and c-Kit in tissues from patients with KD. The results were positive and suggested that Imatinib might be an effective drug for the treatment of the disease. We have also briefly reviewed the epidemiology, aetiology, clinical manifestations, laboratory and pathological examinations, differential diagnoses, treatment and prognosis of KD in this manuscript.