Paraneoplastic Sjogren’s syndrome in gastric cancer

Abstract

In clinical practice, various masks of oncological diseases are often found. Some of them can manifest as a variety of syndromes or symptom complexes that resemble many non-oncologic diseases, including diffuse connective tissue diseases. In some cases, paraneoplastic syndrome facilitates diagnosing a malignant neoplasm in the early stages, but, unfortunately, can also mimic the tumor process by its more prominent manifestations, which lead to late establishment of the true cause of the disease, and therefore postpone specific treatment, creating significant clinical problems. Aim of the study was to reveal pathogenetic relationship between cancer and paraneoplastic syndrome on the example of our clinical observation. A clinical case of diagnosed paraneoplastic syndrome in the form of secondary Sjogren's syndrome, which developed long before the diagnosis of stomach cancer was made, as well as the results of clinical, instrumental, and laboratory examination of the patient, are presented. Questions of epidemiology, etiopathogenesis, and clinical picture of paraneoplastic syndrome are covered. The presented clinical case made it possible to outline the features of the course of paraneoplastic Sjogren's syndrome in gastric cancer and to identify a number of criteria for the diagnostic algorithm of this nosology. In particular, such criteria include general pathogenetic mechanisms, development only in malignant tumors, nonspecific clinical and laboratory manifestations, lack of parallelism with local symptoms of the tumor, the possibility of occurrence of paraneoplastic Sjogren's syndrome before development of local tumor symptoms and reappearance after its relapse. Oncologic diseases are characterized not only by specific symptoms characteristic for a certain organ damage (pain, bleeding, dysfunction, etc.), but also by a variety of nonspecific manifestations (fatigue, subfebrile temperature, weight loss, etc.) regardless of the nature, location and prevalence of the tumor process.