[Cortical-cell thymomas with predominance of so-called nurse-cells in patients with myasthenia].

30 thymomas in patients with generalized myasthenia studied histologically and immunohistochemically are classified as cortico-cell thymomas (n-15), medullary-cell (n-1), mixed-cell (n-10) and cortical-cell thymomas consisting mainly of thymic "nurse"-cells. Pronounced histological features of thymomas with the predominance of "nurse"-cells allow one to consider them as a special variant of thymic tumours. Production of thymic hormones by tumour cells in combination with the loss of HLA-DR antigen expression may be of importance in the pathogenesis of autoimmunization in patients with myasthenia.