Clonal Relapse in Hodgkin's Disease

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Abstract
In classic Hodgkin's disease, the characteristic Reed–Sternberg cells represent a minority of less than 1 percent of cells in affected tissue. The pathogenic role of these cells and their clonal nature have been matters of debate for a long time. Recently, in studies using micromanipulation of Reed–Sternberg cells from single lymph-node sections and subsequent amplification of rearranged immunoglobulin genes by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), evidence was obtained that Reed–Sternberg cells represent a clonal B-cell population.1,2 In these studies Reed–Sternberg cells were isolated from one lymph node for a given case.