Clinicopathological analysis of 598 malignant lymphomas in Taiwan: Seven-year experience in a single institution

Abstract

The clinicopathological characteristics of malignant lymphomas vary according to geography. The purpose of this study is to determine the distribution and clinicopathological characteristics of malignant lymphomas in Taiwan. Archival tissue from 598 malignant lymphomas during the period of 1995-2002 was retrieved. They were reclassified according to the World Health Organization classification system. Clinical data, including age, gender, clinical staging, and follow-up, were scrutinized. There were 330 males and 268 females. The median age at onset of disease was 56 years for B-cell lymphoma (BCL), 50 years for T/NK-cell lymphoma (TCL), and 26 years for Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL). BCL accounted for 80.6%, TCL for 12.4%, and HL for 7%. The major subtypes of non-HL were diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, follicular lymphoma, plasma cell myeloma, marginal zone lymphoma of mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue type, mantle cell lymphoma, unspecified peripheral TCL, and nasal type T/NK-cell lymphoma. Nodular sclerosing subtype was the most common in HL. The frequencies of TCL and HL were relatively low. For histological subtype, enteropathy-type TCL and primary bone marrow HL had higher frequency and poorer prognosis. The 5-year overall survival of BCL, TCL, and HL was 58.9, 34.7, and 83.5%, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest series study of malignant lymphoma in Taiwan. Immunophenotype, histological subtype, and clinical stage play significant roles in prognosis (P < 0.05). Am. J. Hematol. 81:568-575, 2006. V V C 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Distribution of lymphoid neoplasms in the Republic of Korea: Analysis of 5318 cases according to the World Health Organization classification

“…The low proportion of HL in our study (4.1% of total lymphoid neoplasms) was also in good agreement with previous results from Asian countries [1,2,6,9,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]23,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]38,45,46]. Although the proportion of overall HL was low, subtype distribution showed similar pattern to previous studies from various regions, with nodular sclerosis and mixed cellularity being the common subtypes (Supplementary Table III).…”

“…Our current knowledge of NHL subtype distribution in Asia is based primarily on studies of lymphomas, the solid phase, in adult populations [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][33][34][35][36][37][38]40,41]. Although these data effectively characterize the subtype spectrum of lymphomas [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35], most studies have excluded the majority of plasma cell neoplasms and leukemias (circulating phase).…”

“…Although these data effectively characterize the subtype spectrum of lymphomas [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35], most studies have excluded the majority of plasma cell neoplasms and leukemias (circulating phase). Therefore, these results may not be comparable with population-based incidence data for the entire spectrum of WHO classifications [10,42,43].…”

Clinicopathological Features of Malignant Lymphoma in Japan: The Miyagi Study

“…The low frequency of HL, which accounted for less than 10% of malignant lymphomas, was similar to that of Korea (5.3%), Taiwan (7.0%) and Thailand (7.9%) (Ko et al 1998;Sukpanichnant 2004;Lee et al 2006). This is a common finding in Asian countries in comparison with the high frequency (40%-45%) reported in Western countries (Morton et al 2006).…”

“…The relative incidences of the subtypes are known to differ according to geographic areas, which may be ascribed to genetic and environmental factors. Compared with Western countries, Asian countries are known to have higher rates of T/NK-cell lymphoma and lower rates of follicular lymphoma (FL), chronic lymphocytic leukaemia/ small lymphocytic lymphoma (CLL/SLL), and HL (Ko et al 1998;Sukpanichnant 2004;Lee et al 2006;Morton et al 2006).…”