Abstract
Background:
Studies comparing the clinical and prognostic differences between pediatric- and adult-onset mycosis fungoides (MF) are limited.
Objectives:
To determine the impact of childhood-onset MF on clinical features and disease course in a large series.
Methods:
Consecutive MF patients seen in a single centre between 2007 and 2021 were categorized into 3 groups: (i) MF patients diagnosed in the pediatric ages (≤18 years) (pediatric group), (ii) MF patients with disease onset in the pediatric period and diagnosis in adulthood (lately diagnosed pediatric-onset group), and (iii) MF patients with disease onset in the adulthood period (>18 years) (adult-onset group). Demographics, clinical features, stage at diagnosis, and progression to advanced stages during follow-up were recorded and compared.
Results:
Among 651 MF patients, 52 (8%) belonged to the pediatric group and 30 (4.6%) to the lately diagnosed pediatric-onset group. Pediatric MF presented with a combination of clinical variants in 48.1% of cases. While classical MF was the most common presentation in the 3 groups, hypopigmented (55.8%) and folliculotropic (17.3%) variants were more prevalent in the pediatric group compared to the others. Progression to the advanced stages was higher in the adult-onset MF group (12.1%) compared to the pediatric and lately diagnosed pediatric-onset MF groups (2.4%) (P = .014).
Conclusions:
This study highlights a relatively high prevalence of pediatric MF (8%) and lately diagnosed pediatric-onset MF (4.6%), often presenting with multiple and non-classical clinical variants. The higher rate of progression to advanced stages in the adult-onset group supports the relatively benign nature of MF in the pediatric-onset group.
Keywords
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
