Neuromuscular Disease - Tumors

Tumors

Tumors of muscle are of the soft tissue sarcoma group and include:

• Smooth muscle: leiomyoma (benign, very common in the uterus), leiomyosarcoma (malignant, very rare)
• Striated muscle: rhabdomyoma (benign) and rhabdomyosarcoma (malignant) - both very rare
• Metastasis from elsewhere (e.g. lung cancer)

Smooth muscle has been implicated to play a role in a large number of diseases affecting blood vessels, the respiratory tract (e.g., asthma), the digestive system (e.g. irritable bowel syndrome) and the urinary tract (e.g., urinary incontinence). These disease processes are not usually confined to the muscular tissue. In general, muscle tumors are rare, since muscle cells are not constantly dividing cells.

Tumors of the thymus gland are implicated in some cases of myasthenia gravis and other neuromuscular diseases.

Tumors of the peripheral nervous system are known, but rare, because nerve cells are not ones that divide very much under normal circumstances.