STATISTICAL STUDY ON DOUBLE PARAPROTEINEMIAS - EVIDENCE FOR A COMMON CELLULAR ORIGIN OF BOTH MYELOMA GLOBULINS

  • 1 January 1975
    • journal article
    • research article
    • Vol. 22  (6) , 517-523
Abstract
Double paraproteinemias(DPP) are usually considered as resulting from a proliferation of 2 independent clones of cells. The present study describes a statistical analysis based on 141 published human cases of DPP. The incidence of the heavy[H] chain classes and light[L] chain type association was compared with the frequency of occurrence of the same H and L chains in simple paraproteinemias. Computation of the frequency of associations showed that different H chains are randomly associated in DPP. L chains are more frequently of the same type in both immunoglobulins, more so than could be expected on the basis of a biclonal hypothesis (P < 0.005). This preferential occurrence of identical light chains suggests a linkage in the synthesis of the 2 proteins and it favors a monoclonal origin of myeloma cells in DPP.