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E. Piqué‐Duran, M. J. Pérez‐Díaz, J. A. Pérez‐Cejudo, Pyogenic granuloma‐like lesions caused by capecitabine therapy, Clinical and Experimental Dermatology, Volume 33, Issue 5, 1 September 2008, Pages 652–653, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2230.2008.02769.x
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Conflict of interest: none declared.
Capecitabine is a chemotherapeutic agent that converts to fluorouracil (FU) within the body, via the enzyme thymidine phosphorylase. Capecitabine offers some advantages over 5‐FU. It is given orally, and is considered to have fewer side‐effects because tumour tissue contains a high quantity of thymidine phosphorylase, thus the active metabolite FU is concentrated in the tumour.1 Currently capecitabine is approved for use in metastatic colorectal cancer, and in some cases of metastatic breast cancer.1
Cutaneous side‐effects are common in capecitabine treatment, probably because of the high concentration of thymidine phosphorylase in the skin. By far the most common is hand–foot syndrome, which affects > 50% of patients.1 Other cutaneous side‐effects are dermatitis,1 stomatitis,1 skin and nail discoloration,1 alopecia1 and macular hyperpigmentation2. We report a patient who developed pyogenic granuloma (PG)‐like lesions after capecitabine treatment.
A 51‐year‐old man was referred for evaluation of painful, eroded papules located in the lateral folds of the fingers (Fig. 1), which had appeared 6 weeks after beginning treatment with capecitabine for a relapsed epidermoid carcinoma of the larynx. Previously, the patient had received radiotherapy twice. He denied any history of ungual trauma.
