Radial Segmentation of Nuclei (Rieder Cells): A Morphological Marker of T-Cell Neoplasms?

Abstract

Pretreatment blood smears of adult patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia were examined for neoplastic cells showing nuclear radial segmentation (RS). RS was present in 6 of 7 patients with immunologically proven T-cell leukemia, but not in 11 patients whose leukemic cells lacked T-cell markers. Electron microscopic studies of neoplastic cells showed multiple nuclear indentations and abundant cytoplasmic micro-filaments and microtubuli in connection with pericentriolar dense material. RS formation was decreased in 1 patient after chemotherapy with a vincristine-containing regimen, while the white cell count remained unchanged. Radial segmentation (RS) of leukocyte nuclei is a well-known phenomenon, which is observed ex vivo (Rieder cells), and can be induced in vitro. Convoluted or multilobulated nuclei in lymphoid neoplasms are similar to RS nuclei both with regard to their structure and their sensitivity to spindle-blocking drugs. We propose that the nuclear alterations observed in a variety of different T-cell neoplasms are identical with RS, and suggest that RS might be a morphological marker for subsets of lymphoproliferative disorders of T-cell origin.

Morphological and cytochemical findings in 150 cases of T‐lineage acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in adults

“…It was seen in 26% of cases of cortical T-ALL, whereas it was exceedingly rare in the other subtypes and also in c-ALL. This morphological variant might be very close to what has been described as radial segmentation of nuclei in T-lineage ALL (Neftel et al, 1983;McKenna et al, 1979).…”

“…, granules (Cantù -Rajnoldi et al, 1989;Smith & Collins, 1990;Cerezo et al, 1991;Grogan et al, 1981;Darbyshire et al, 1987;Hay et al, 1987;Fradera et al, 1986), markedly hyperchromatic convoluted nuclei (McKenna et al, 1979;Kernan et al, 1986), radial segmentation of nuclei (Neftel et al, 1983), or hand-mirror appearance of the blasts (Glassy et al, 1980;Gramatzki et al, 1985;Cerezo et al, 1984). This paper presents a detailed morphological and cytochemical analysis of 150 consecutive cases of T-lineage ALL diagnosed by the central diagnostic review panel of the German Multicentre ALL Study Group (GMALL).…”

Anti-CD antibody microarray for human leukocyte morphology examination allows analyzing rare cell populations and suggesting preliminary diagnosis in leukemia

“…Binuclear lymphocytes were observed in 7 donors out of 40 and were captured only by anti-CD19, anti-CD20 or anti-CD22 supporting the supposition that deep single clefts in nuclei or binuclear appearance are typical for the B-cells and have a different underlying mechanism from the radial segmentation causing the “clover-leaf” nuclei 28 .…”

“…The early studies of normal lymphocytes with clefted and radially segmented nuclei 26 41 27 together with the data on the neoplasms where the leukemic lymphocytes obtain single nuclear clefts (FL, MCL) 29 or “clover-leaf” nuclei (adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma) 29 28 suggest that the radially segmented nuclei are only observed in T-cells while single clefts are specific for B-cells. Our results show that the lymphocytes with lobed nuclei isolated from the peripheral blood of healthy individuals and captured by the anti-CD antibody microarray are either NK- or CD8+ but not CD4+ T-cells in contrast with the lymphocytes with mitogen-induced lobulation of the nuclei 27 .…”