Clonal karyotypic abnormalities in gynecomastia.

Gynecomastia is a benign condition that frequently occurs in the male breast gland; however, the cytogenetic data on this entity are very limited. To our knowledge, three cases have been reported in the literature, and the only one with an abnormal karyotype had a concomitant breast carcinoma. In this study we report clonal chromosomal alterations in a gynecomastia sample without any signs of adjacent malignant tissue. The nonrandom abnormalities observed were a deletion of 12p, monosomies of chromosomes 9, 17, 19, and 20, and the presence of a marker chromosome. Most of these alterations have been previously described in the literature in other breast lesions, including benign and malignant (male and female) tumors, indicating their recurrence and nonrandomness in abnormal processes of the mammary gland.