Integration of Modern Data in WHO Categorization of Lymphosarcomas. Its Value for Prognosis Prediction and Therapeutic Adaptation to Prognosis

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Many classifications of hematosarcomas or malignant non-Hodgkin’s lymphosarcomas have been proposed [3, 9, 16, 17, 23, 20, 29]. Some are still used, mainly that of Rappaport [29], which were conceived before the establishment of the concept of lymphocyte transformation by antigen(s) into large pyroninophilic cells (Fig. 1), which were confused with “histiocytes” before this concept and have been called immunoblasts by DAMESHEK [7]. The recent availability of immune and/or cytochemical markers (Fig 2) able to recognize T- and B- and so-called null lymphocytes (Table 1) [6,13, 31, 36, 38] have not only subtracted from the so-called Open image in new window Table I. T- and B- immune markers histiocytic tumors, the immunoblastic lymphosarcoma [22], but also mycosis fungoides which have been shown to be a T-lymphosarcoma [18]. Hence, the field of histiocytic sarcomas has been restricted and may be still further restricted if not suppressed in the future when we are able to identify the tumors composed of reticulum and/or dentritic cells, such as the cells recently studied by Steinman et. al. [33,34,35]. For this reason, the WHO Reference Center for the Classification of Neoplasias of Hematopoietic and Lymphoid tissues [23] has decided to use the term reticulosarcoma to designate the sarcomas of so-called mononuclear phagocytes, according to a WHO monograph [37] because it is historical [26] and because there is no proof that the cells which constitute this tumor in a strict sense are not reticulum cells and/or dentritic cells.