Adenocarcinoid tumor of the colon arising in preexisting ulcerative colitis

Patients with ulcerative colitis are at increased risk of developing adenocarcinoma of the colon. The authors describe a patient whose colonic neoplasm demonstrated histologic characteristics of both an adenocarcinoma and a carcinoid tumor and which was pathologically identical to a appendiceal adenocarcinoid. Because individual tumor cells stained positively for both mucin and argentaffin granules, the histologic picture is unique among the malignancies seen in patients with ulcerative colitis and cannot be explained as a composite of two independent neoplasms that have grown together. Since the tumor discussed seems to have originated from a single cell line, the theory that carcinoids develop from neural crest cells which have migrated to embryonic gut endoderm must be regarded with considerable doubt.