Abstract
MYASTHENIA gravis, a disease characterized by progressive muscle weakness, is thought to be an autoimmune process, patients having an increased incidence of other autoimmune diseases1. They have autoantibodies directed against the A-band striations of skeletal muscle2 which cross react with myoid cells in the thymic medulla3. Thymic abnormalities are consistently found. Sloan4, in the first detailed account of the histopathology of the thymus in myasthenia gravis, found lymphoid germinal centres in the medulla in seven of ten cases and increased lymphocytes in the medulla in all cases. This latter finding has received little emphasis from subsequent investigators, perhaps because of the difficulties of detecting an increase of lymphocytes in an organ that already contains many of them. Besides the increased density and larger size of lymphoid germinal centres in the thymic medulla5 10 per cent of these patients also have thymomas6.
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OPPENHEIM, J., GOLDSTEIN, G. Enhanced Thymic Lymphocyte Response to Phytohaemagglutinin in Experimental Autoimmune Thymitis. Nature 222, 192–193 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1038/222192a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/222192a0
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