Amyloid-producing squamous cell carcinoma of the uterine cervix.

Abstract

We describe two unusual cases of squamous cell carcinoma of the uterine cervix associated with prominent intratumoral deposition of amyloid. Most of the amyloid is deposited within and between the tumor islands, but some amyloid globules are intracellular. The amyloid shows immunoreactivity for keratin, suggesting that it is derived from cytokeratin intermediate filaments, similar to the pathogenesis of primary cutaneous amyloidosis. Tumor-related amyloidosis is a heterogeneous but distinctive subgroup of amyloidosis, including cytokeratin-derived amyloid deposited within squamous or squamous-related tumors as in the present cases, polypeptide-derived amyloid associated with endocrine tumors, and systemic inflammation-associated amyloid (AA protein) as observed rarely in Hodgkin's disease and renal cell carcinoma.