Essential Macroglobulinemia

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Abstract
Essential or "Waldenström's" macroglobulinemia was first described by Waldenström (1) in 1944, and since then it has been reported with increasing frequency (2-6). It is a disease characterized by abnormal proliferation of cells that are generally described as atypical lymphoid cells and the presence in the serum of a high molecular weight globulin that is quite homogeneous on electrophoresis. This paper describes a patient with the characteristic findings of Waldenström's macroglobulinemia in whom macroglobulin was demonstrated in the cytoplasm of certain cells in the spleen by immunofluorescent techniques; these studies were correlated with the morphologic appearance of the cells when