SUPERNUMERARY NIPPLES AND BECKER NEVUS - A PREVIOUSLY UNDESCRIBED ASSOCIATION - REPORT OF 9 PATIENTS INCLUDING A SUBSET WITH UROPATHIES

Supernumerary nipple (SN), or polythelia, is a congenital anomaly of e ctodermal origin, and which is clue for a broad spectrum of kidney and urinary tract malformations. Becker's nevus (BN) is a hamartomatous d efect of ectomesodermal origin usually occurring after puberty. Here w e describe the clinical association between SN and BN and discuss the further association of these two cutaneous defects with urinary tract malformations. We have observed that 9 out of 169 (5.32%) adult Caucas ian subjects with SN had clinical evidence of BN. An ipsilaterality of the two defects was recorded in 8 out of the 9 patients. Moreover, 2 out of the 9 had concomitant occurrence of uropathies, in the form of familial renal cysts, associated with ipsilateral SN and BN. Our obser vation deals with an association never-before encountered, between SN an BN. The further concomitance of renal cysts represents a previously unreported associated with a hypothetic syndrome-like pattern. A poss ible explanation may be in the developmental field defect concept refl ecting a disturbance early in embryogenesis in the specific polytopic fields involved. We suggest the acronym ''SNUB'' (Supernumerary Nipple , Uropathies - for familial renal cysts - and Becker's nevus) for this association.