Histological, Immunohistological, and Clinical Features of Merkel Cell Carcinoma in Correlation to Merkel Cell Polyomavirus Status.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Skin Cancer Volume 2012, Article ID 983421, 5 pages doi:10.1155/2012/983421 Review Article Histological, Immunohistological, and Clinical Features of Merkel Cell Carcinoma in Correlation to Merkel Cell Polyomavirus Status T. Jaeger, J. Ring, and C. Andres Department of Dermatology and Allergy Biederstein, Technische Universitat Munchen, 80802 Munich, Germany ¨ ¨ Correspondence should be addressed to T. Jaeger, tessie.jaeger@gmx.de Received 30 December 2011; Accepted 2 February 2012 Academic Editor: Arash Kimyai-Asadi Copyright © 2012 T. Jaeger et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Merkel cell carcinoma is a rare, but highly malignant tumor of the skin with high rates of metastasis and poor survival. Its incidence rate rises and is currently about 0.6/100000/year. Clinical differential diagnoses include basal cell carcinoma, cyst, amelanotic melanoma, lymphoma and atypical fibroxanthoma. In this review article clinical, histopathological and immunhistochemical features of Merkel cell carcinoma are reported. In addition, the role of Merkel cell polyomavirus is discussed. 1. Introduction It usually manifests as solitary, firm, flesh-colored to red nod- ule with a smooth, shiny surface, sometimes with telangiec- Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is one of the most malignant tasia [ 11, 12]. Differential diagnosis includes basal cell car- tumors of the skin which affects primari