TRANSPLANTATION OF CONGENITAL PRIMITIVE NEUROECTODERMAL TUMOR OF FETUS TO THE UTERUS OF MOTHER - APPLICATION OF BIOTIN-LABELED CHROMOSOME-SPECIFIC PROBES

We report a 38-year-old gravida 3, para 3, white female with an unrema rkable history and normal amniocentesis, who delivered a male infant w ith a large pedunculated and ulcerated tumor by vaginal delivery. A po rtion of the tumor was sheared and expelled with the normal placenta a t the time of delivery. The biopsy of the infant mass and the expelled tissue showed histologic features of a small round cell tumor with im munohistochemical features of a primitive neuroectodermal tumor (PNET) . The infant eventually died at the age of 4 weeks as a result of exte nsive dissemination of tumor. The mother had postpartum bleeding, and fractional dilation and curettage procedures at 6 weeks and 4 months a fter delivery revealed tumor similar to that of the infant. The mother underwent radical hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy, w hich revealed a neoplasm at the junction of the lower uterine segment and cervix. Fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) study of both the infant's tumor and the mother's uterine tumor showed positivity for t he Y chromosome by using a classical alpha-satellite Y chromosome-spec ific probe. These findings support the hypothesis that the tumor was t ransferred from the fetus to the mother.