Acute lymphoblastic leukemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma with mediastinal mass--a study of 23 children; different disorders or different stages?
Mediastinal tumor was found in both acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL). Most cases showed the T-cell phenotype. We query whether these two diseases are in fact different disorders or merely different stages of the same disease. Twelve ALL patients with a mediastinal mass and eleven NHL patients with a mediastinal mass under 15 years of age were studied with respect to cytogenetics, immunophenotype, genotype and clinical features. Clonal chromosome abnormalities were found in 75% (9/12) of the ALL patients and 100% (11/11) of the NHL patients. Of the 20 patients with chromosome abnormalities, 12 (60%) had translocations involving 14q11-13 and 7q35 (8 ALL, 4 NHL). t(9;17)(q34;q23) was found only in 3 patients with NHL. All showed the T-cell phenotype except two, who had none of the chromosomal abnormalities frequently detected in T cell ALL/NHL. In T-cell patients, immunophenotypical staging of ALL showed a predominance of early and common thymocyte phenotypes while that of NHL showed a predominance of common thymocyte phenotypes. All 7 of the T-cell patients examined showed rearrangements of the T-cell receptor beta chain gene. On the other hand, two non-T-cell, non-B-cell patients showed no rearrangement. There were no apparent clinical differences between ALL and NHL patients in age (median 8.6 vs 8.9 years), sex ratio (F/M 9/3 vs 7/4) or in the rate of complete remission (90% vs 100%). Our study demonstrated no relevant clinical, prognostic, or immunophenotypic differences between ALL and NHL with mediastinal mass.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Shikano
T
T
Department of Pediatrics, Hokkaido University, Japan.
Arioka
H
H
Kobayashi
R
R
Naito
H
H
Ishikawa
Y
Y
Nakadate
H
H
Hatae
Y
Y
Takeda
T
T
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002869:Chromosome Aberrations; D025063:Chromosome Disorders; D002877:Chromosomes, Human; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007621:Karyotyping; D008228:Lymphoma, Non-Hodgkin / Q000235:genetics / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology*; D008297:Male; D008479:Mediastinal Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology*; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D054198:Precursor Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia-Lymphoma / Q000235:genetics / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology*; D015996:Survival Rate; D014178:Translocation, Genetic