CASE REPORT article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Pediatric Oncology
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1635659
Case Report: 3 Cases of Abdominal Lesions with Lower Limb Lymphedema—Rare Mutations in Complex Lymphatic Anomalies
Provisionally accepted- West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
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Complex lymphatic anomalies (CLAs) are rare vascular anomalies characterized by abnormal proliferation of lymphatic and blood vessels, often resulting in multisystem involvement with heterogeneous clinical manifestations. We present 3 patients with CLAs exhibiting overlapping features of lower limb lymphedema and intra-abdominal vascular malformations, a phenotypic combination infrequently described in literature. Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) analysis in 2 cases detected somatic mutations at significantly higher variant allele frequencies compared to population databases, and mutant genes that were previously rare in vascular diseases were reported. These noninvasive molecular findings demonstrate diagnostic utility in identifying novel genotype-phenotype associations, providing insights into disease mechanisms and informing therapeutic strategies for atypical CLAs presentations. Our observations highlight ctDNA as a promising tool for refining diagnosis and guiding personalized management in rare vascular anomalies.
Keywords: Complex lymphatic anomalies, Generalized lymphatic anomaly, kaposiformlymphangiomatosis, ALK, PDGFRA
Received: 26 May 2025; Accepted: 10 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Jiang, Qiu, Yang, Yang, Chen and Ji. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yi Ji, jijiyuanyuan@163.com
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