The patient is a 56-year-old Japanese woman who suffered from
breast cancer and
ovarian cancer at intervals of 6 years, and was also complicated by two episodes of
dermatomyositis, each of which occurred simultaneously with each of two
cancers. When she was 51 years old, she developed
dermatomyositis for the first time 6 months after the resection of
breast cancer, whose histological type was
tubular adenocarcinoma. The
dermatomyositis remitted without oral
corticosteroids in 2 months, and the remission had continued for 6 years. However, at the age of 56,
dermatomyositis abruptly recurred with a pruritic generalized
rash, Gottron's papules and elevated serum CK levels. Examination for
malignancy revealed an ovarian
tumor, which was diagnosed as serous papillaly
adenocarcinoma, and the surgery was performed. After the resection of the
ovarian cancer,
skin rash was improved dramatically and CK levels were normalized again without oral
corticosteroids. Since there were no evidences of recurrence of the
breast cancer, it was considered that each episode of
dermatomyositis was associated with each of the
cancers, respectively. We report this rare and interesting case to consider the etiology of
cancer-associated
myositis as a
paraneoplastic syndrome, since the two
cancers have different histological types.