Approximately 20% of patients with systemic mastocytosis (SM) have an associated haematological, clonal, non-mast cell lineage disease, and most exhibit an associated myelogenous neoplasm. This report describes a 48 year old man with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) and a type t(8;21) cytogenetic abnormality. Associated bone marrow mastocytosis (a defined subtype of SM) was only detected after successful polychemotherapy in the state of bone marrow aplasia, and persisted after complete remission of AML. The diagnosis of mastocytosis was based on the demonstration of a multifocal dense mastocytic infiltrate. The atypical mast cells showed prominent spindling and an aberrant immunophenotype, with coexpression of tryptase, chymase, KIT, and CD25—which is expressed only on neoplastic (not normal) mast cells. In addition, the transforming somatic mutation D816V of the c-kit gene was detected. Re-examination of the pretherapeutic (initial) bone marrow revealed a slight diffuse increase in partially spindle shaped mast cells also exhibiting an abnormal immunophenotype, with CD25 expression, although compact mastocytic infiltrates were not detected. Because the D816V mutation was detected in the initial bone marrow specimen, strict application of three minor diagnostic criteria (spindling, CD25, D816V) enabled a diagnosis of SM-AML to be confirmed retrospectively in the initial bone marrow tissue.

Prognostically relevant risk factors in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) have predominantly been evaluated in elderly populations. We tested whether previously described risk factors are also valid in younger, poor-prognosis DLBCL patients. Paraffin-embedded samples from 112 patients with de novo DLBCL, enrolled in the R-MegaCHOEP trial of the German High Grade Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Study Group (DSHNHL) were investigated using immunohistochemistry (MYC, FOXP1, LMO2, GCET1, CD5, CD10, BCL2, BCL6, IRF4/MUM1) and fluorescence in situ hybridization (MYC, BCL2, BCL6). MYC, BCL2 and BCL6 breaks occurred in 14, 21 and 31%, respectively. In the majority of cases, MYC was simultaneously rearranged with BCL2 and/or BCL6. The adverse impact of MYC rearrangements was confirmed, but the sole presence of BCL2 breaks emerged as a novel prognostic marker associated with inferior overall survival (OS) (P=0.002). Combined overexpression of MYC and BCL2 showed only limited association with inferior OS. All immunohistochemical cell of origin classifiers applied failed to predict survival time. DLBCL tumors with significant proportion of immunoblastic and/or immunoblastic-plasmacytoid cells had inferior OS, independently from from BCL2 break. Younger, poor-prognosis DLBCL patients, therefore, display different biological risk factors compared with an elderly population, with BCL2 translocations emerging as a powerful negative prognostic marker.

There is an unexpectedly high frequency of CD23 expression in FL in general, which is even more pronounced in inguinal nodes.

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