A 63-year-old man was admitted to our hospital for treatment of
hypogammaglobulinemia with
thymoma (Good's syndrome). Tests for immunological function showed an abnormality in humoral immunity with decreases in the proportion of cells bearing B-cell markers in the peripheral blood and bone marrow. The patient was found to have Campylobacter fetus
sepsis caused by the
hypogammaglobulinemia due to humoral immunodeficiency, and he was given
gamma-globulin supplement.
Thymectomy was performed due to enlargement of the
thymoma after 4 years of follow-up and the pathological diagnosis was
thymoma of the non-encapsulated, epithelial spindle cell type. Although there was no recurrence of
thymoma, the
hypogammaglobulinemia remained unchanged and the patient continued to suffer from repeated
infections. Thus, we describe the case of a patient with Good's syndrome associated with independent humoral immunodeficiency in whom the effect of
thymectomy for
hypogammaglobulinemia was negative. In this respect,
thymectomy was only beneficial when the
thymoma proliferated and seemed to be more threatening than the
hypogammaglobulinemia for the patient.