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Waldenström macroglobulinemia with an IgM-kappa antiepidermal basement membrane zone antibody
M W Cobb1, N Domloge-Hultsch, J N Frame
1Department of Dermatology, National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, MD 20889.
Background:
Waldenström macroglobulinemia, a lymphoplasmacytoid cell malignant neoplasm associated with a monoclonal IgM paraprotein, has been associated with a number of cutaneous manifestations. On rare occasions, IgM deposits have been demonstrated in the epidermal basement zone of patients with WM.
Observations:
We report the case of a patient with Waldenström macroglobulinemia and IgM-kappa paraprotein who had development of an eruption of pruritic papules and demonstrated the following unusual immunopathologic findings: (1) deposits of IgM-kappa in the epidermal basement membrane zone of lesional and nonlesional skin; (2) a circulating IgM-kappa antiepidermal basement membrane zone antibody; and (3) binding of this circulating IgM-kappa antiepidermal basement membrane zone antibody to both sides of 1 mol/L sodium chloride split skin. The cutaneous eruption cleared completely with oral psoralen with long-wave UV radiation in the A range (PUVA) therapy.
Conclusions:
We present a patient with Waldenström macroglobulinemia who had a distinctive papular eruption and immunopathologic findings suggesting that his paraprotein has specificity for the epidermal basement membrane zone.